WhatsApp has announced that it adds advertisements to the popular messages app, although the first implementation promises to be relatively modest.
In a recent Meta blog post, the company revealed that added advertisements to the App Updates tab. If you have ignored this tab so far (guilty), status updates have been kept here and everything that is new from a channel that you follow.
Meta claims that this tab update is used by 1.5 billion people around the world every day, so there are clearly many eyeballs for WhatsApp’s switch to advertisements.
WhatsApp advertisements and privacy promise
These threatening advertisements will appear in the part of the channel status.
Meta claims that advertisements will not appear in your personal chats, which means that if you only use WhatsApp as a cross-platforming Message app, you may never have to encounter this new element.
Apparently this new advertising system is also built with privacy in mind. Your messages remain end-to-end encrypted, which means that Meta cannot use your personal correspondence as a basis for personalized advertisements. Meta also promises that it will never sell your number of advertisers.
It will use more limited information, such as the country or city in which you are located, your language, the channels that you follow and how you deal with these advertisements.
If you have added WhatsApp to Accounts Center, Meta uses your ad choices from your other Meta accounts.
Meta
Other WhatsApp -channel changes
In addition to advertisements, WhatsApp will add the possibility to subscribe to channels for a monthly fee, so that you can support your favorite makers and open the possibility of exclusive updates.
It also introduces promoted channels, and offers channels the opportunity to pay for better visibility and discoveryability. They are essentially more advertisements, but with the product the channels itself.
These new changes to the channel institution, including advertisements, will be slowly rolled out to the WhatsApp app in the coming months in the coming months.
It is the last in a series of important tweaks and updates that have come to the WhatsApp app in recent months. Towards the end of May we finally have the WhatsApp iPad app that we waited for.
