WhatsApp launching new paid ad features for advertisers

WhatsApp, the world’s most popular messaging app, is making a big change by introducing new tools for advertisers. For years, WhatsApp has remained mostly free from ads, but now it will begin showing ads in specific parts of the app.

The new advertising features will appear only in the Updates tab and include:

• Paid channel subscriptions

• Promoted channels in the Discovery section

• Ads in Status updates, similar to Instagram Stories

According to WhatsApp, these new features are designed to protect user privacy. Personal chats, voice calls, and private messages will stay end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one can read them — not even WhatsApp.

Nikila Srinivasan, a top official at Meta (WhatsApp’s parent company), said ads will be shown based on basic data like your country, city, language, and how you use the Updates tab.

However, WhatsApp has promised that phone numbers, group chats, and private messages will not be used for ad targeting, and will never be shared or sold to advertisers.

Meta is introducing these changes to earn money from WhatsApp’s huge user base, which includes over 2 billion people worldwide.

The new ad features will roll out slowly over the next few months, and not every country will get them at the same time. Also, since these features are limited to the Updates tab, users who only use WhatsApp for personal messaging won’t see any difference in their regular chats.

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