Photo Credit: Thomas Ulrich from Pixabay
I’m sure you remember talks about Facebook bringing ads to WhatsApp? Luckily, we can start the week on a high note by saying goodbye to that idea.
Facebook’s Early Plans
When you buy another company for $22 billion or R318,051,800,000 (yeah I had to write that in full to show you the magnitude of the amount), chances are small that you won’t try to make money with it. There was a brief period where you had to pay a subscription fee of 99 cents per year but that was halted quickly.
The main plan with ads was to put it in the status section but it was not implemented.
WhatsApp Founders
Both Jan Koum and Brian Acton, founders of WhatsApp, left the company due to the fact that WhatsApp will be used for monetization after Facebook bought it, as well as because of disputes over privacy and targeted advertising.
What’s Next for WhatsApp
The exact future of if and how WhatsApp will show ads is still unclear. Facebook dismantled the team that was working on serving ads on WhatsApp and the code they wrote up until now has been deleted from WhatsApp’s code.
With ads out of the picture, the company is apparently working on improving features for individuals and businesses that use WhatsApp for their businesses. The business features are especially used in developing countries. WhatsApp Business works by billing a small fee per message to the businesses to communicate directly to customers using their platform.
The latest addition to WhatsApp Business is the option for users to create catalogues of their products using WhatsApp.
Closing
We can breathe a sigh of relief about WhatsApp ads for now. With ad technologies these days, the ads would probably not have been visually invasive, but there are other ways to make money and luckily Facebook is exploring those avenues first.
*- Exchange Rate from Investing.com as on 19 Jan 2020 at 20:38
