Dubai: One of the things that attract people to WhatsApp is that they can chat with friends and family for as long as they want without any interruption.
Unlike in YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, subscribers of the popular messaging tool don’t see any ads getting in the way of their conversations or newsfeeds, and what’s more, the tool is completely free.
However, the chat experience will soon change, with the Facebook-owned company announcing recently that it will launch advertisements on the app, ending the era of ad-free chats for over a billion users worldwide.
The advertisements will be popping up on the “Status” section of the tool and will start rolling out next year. It will be similar to how the paid content is shown through Instagram Stories.
The move was officially confirmed by the social media giant at the recent Facebook Marketing Summit in Netherlands.
“WhatsApp will bring Stories Ads in its status product in 2020,” tweeted Olivier Ponteville, head of media at BeConnectAgency, who attended the event.
It was first reported in October that the Facebook-owned app was planning to introduce advertisements through the “Status” section of the messaging tool.
The “Status” section enables users to post images, videos, texts or animated GIFs that disappear after a 24-hour period. The feature is also available on Facebook.
A presentation slide used at the summit also showed how the ads will look like when they go live.
