WhatsApp will place ads in chat app status display next year
WhatsApp has announced that from next year advertisements will be placed in the status function of the chat app. It is not yet clear exactly how this happens and when the advertisements will be seen for the first time.
A WhatsApp spokesperson confirmed the arrival of advertisements in the status function, but did not provide any concrete further information. In August, the Wall Street Journal already reported that Facebook wants WhatsApp to generate more income with these ads, among other things. The confirmation of the arrival of ads in WhatsApp’s status feature comes in a larger Forbes story in which WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton explains why he left Facebook and how much he had a difference of opinion with Facebook on the issue. role of privacy and how to make money.
Acton reports in the interview that Facebook is “not the bad guy”, even though he explains, among other things, that Facebook instructed him to tell the European regulator in 2014 that it was very difficult to combine the user data from Facebook and WhatsApp. From August 2016, however, Facebook did, partly to show more relevant advertisements. In 2014, the European Commission investigated the consequences of the takeover of WhatsApp by Facebook. In May, the EU fined Facebook €110 million for this deception.
The WhatsApp co-founder also says that, unlike Facebook’s top executives, he was unwilling to introduce targeted ads and was a big believer in end-to-end encryption. Acton saw more in a revenue model in which payment had to be made after exceeding a certain number of messages sent. However, Sheryl Sandberg, a director at Facebook, saw nothing in it, because in her view it would not generate enough income.
With his departure in September 2017, Acton ultimately left an option of $850 million, which he was still entitled to under the WhatsApp takeover by Facebook if he had stayed with Facebook for a few months longer. He announced at the end of February that he would donate 50 million dollars to a new foundation for the chat app Signal. Jan Koum also left Facebook in May; he founded Whatsapp in 2009 together with Acton.