WhatsApp announced on Monday that users will begin to notice ads in certain sections of the app, as Meta company aims to create a new source of income by reaching out to the billions of users who use the messaging service.
Ads will only be displayed in the Updates tab of the app, which is accessed by around 1.5 billion users daily. But, according to the developers, they won’t show up in personal chat areas.
“WhatsApp mentioned in a blog post that the personal messaging experience isn’t going to change. Personal messages, calls, and statuses are all end-to-end encrypted, so they can’t be used for ads”.
This is a huge shift for the company, whose founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, promised to keep the platform ad-free when they launched it back in 2009.
In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp, but they both moved on a few years after that. Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company, has been working hard to make money from WhatsApp for quite some time.
WhatsApp announced that ads will be aimed at users based on details such as their age, the country or city they’re in, the language they speak, the channels they follow in the app, and their interactions with the ads they encounter.
WhatsApp has stated that it will not utilize personal messages, calls, or groups of which a user is a member to target advertisements to that user.
WhatsApp introduced three new advertising features on Monday to help monetize its user base. One of these features is Channels, which will allow users to subscribe for a monthly fee to receive exclusive updates. Additionally, business owners can pay to boost their channel’s visibility to attract new users.
The majority of Meta’s income is generated from ads. In 2025, the company based in Menlo Park, California, reported a total revenue of $164.5 billion, with $160.6 billion coming from advertising.
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