WhatsApp announced on Monday that it will introduce its most significant advertising features yet, signaling a major shift for the messaging platform, which has largely remained ad-free since its launch.
Since Meta acquired WhatsApp in 2014, the app has maintained minimal advertising, limited mainly to WhatsApp Business promotional messages and small-scale Status ad tests in select markets. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp has avoided ads within personal chats or conversation feeds — a key aspect of its appeal due to strong privacy protections.
The new monetization features will be exclusively introduced in WhatsApp’s Updates tab, which includes Channels and Status features used by 1.5 billion people daily since its widespread rollout last year. WhatsApp emphasized that personal messaging users will not see any changes, as the new features can be turned off in settings and will not affect private chats.
WhatsApp’s planned features include:
- Paid channel subscriptions
- Promoted channels in the Discovery directory
- Advertisements within Status (similar to Instagram Stories)
Meta reassured users that privacy remains paramount. Nikila Srinivasan, Meta’s Vice President of Product Management, stressed that all personal messages, calls, and statuses will remain end-to-end encrypted, meaning even WhatsApp cannot access or use them for advertising purposes. The company also pledged never to sell or share users’ phone numbers with advertisers.
Instead, ads will be targeted using general information such as the user’s country, city, device language, and activity within the Updates tab.
Industry experts have long anticipated this monetization move given WhatsApp’s massive user base of over two billion monthly active users. The new ad features will roll out gradually over the coming months, and availability may vary by country.
