The possible appearance of advertising in WhatsApp has been talked about for a long time, but so far it has been a rumor. But now Facebook has officially confirmed that ads will indeed appear in the messenger in 2020. About it was at the marketing summit in the Netherlands.
At the same time, the company noted that ad units will be displayed on the status screen, and not in chats or in the contact list. This will make them less intrusive. Technically and visually, it will be similar to Instagram Stories. Obviously, the developers want to somehow unify the approach to different applications.
It is noted that advertisements will not be too intrusive, however, most likely, this will depend on how often users look at the status of their friends and interlocutors. Meanwhile, the emergence of ads on WhatsApp could spark a new wave of user migration away from the Facebook messaging app and towards alternative solutions like Telegram. At the moment, it is Pavel Durov's messenger that is the number one competitor to WhatsApp and is offered completely free of charge, with no ads.
There is no exact date for the launch of the new feature yet, it is assumed that the company will first improve the security situation of WhatsApp in general, and only then will experiment with monetization.
Recall that earlier Pavel Durov already WhatsApp in the deliberate placement of backdoors in the program code, and also stated that it was for this reason that the messenger is very much loved in authoritarian and totalitarian states. Among them, he named Russia.
Source: 3dnews.ru