Facebook will reportedly start showing ads on WhatsApp in the year 2020
It seems like the trend on social media nowadays is all about sharing “Stories”. If you are not familiar with it, it is the same as 24-hour ephemeral media feature in the fellow Facebook-owned Instagram app.
And now, Facebook just confirmed that it will start showing ads on the WhatsApp platform in the “Stories” section this coming 2020. The announcement was made during its annual Facebook Marketing Summit in the Netherlands.
WhatsApp will start showing ads in the platform in the year 2020
During the summit, several slides were shown that seems to feature ads within the app’s Stories section. Pictures of same slideshows were then shared on Twitter by social media commentator, Matt Navarra.
This is how it is going to work, when you select a story from your contacts, instead of seeing the profile picture the name of the advertiser would rather be shown together with their associated advert.
Just like in Instagram Stories, users will be able to swipe up the ads to visit the promotional page or website linked with the brand.
And judging from the photos shared from the event, the ads will also take up your device’s whole screen as you click on your friend’s Status.
Not many users of the WhatsApp are thrilled for this new feature, ads themselves are not exactly the most welcome user-experience intrusion. But this will be a much-preferred option than those of the intrusive banner ads.
The ads in general is not the most ideal. But many have already seen it coming to the messaging platform as Facebook has sought to monetize WhatsApp for some time now. This might just be the best solutions to show ads that are not overly intrusive to users.
Furthermore, Facebook has not given any specific date as to when exactly is the roll out of this feature in WhatsApp in the 2020 window.
Wrapping Up
Both Instagram and Facebook have some sort of similarities when it comes to this ad feature. And for sure, most WhatsApp users have at least one, if not both, of those apps anyway.
It seems that WhatsApp is no longer the privacy-friendly app it once was, as the end-to-end encryption will now come to an end with the integration of the ads.
It is still yet to be seen whether WhatsApp fans will take kindly to this change. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how the users will adapt to this change in the world’s biggest messaging app.