WhatsApp was arguably the last remaining major platform that Facebook hadn’t monetized fully yet. Judging from its huge purchase years back, we knew it was bound to happen sooner or later.
Well, it is happening for sure as WhatsApp’s VP confirmed that ads are coming to the platform.
“We are going to be putting ads in ‘Status’. That is going to be primary monetisation mode for the company as well as an opportunity for businesses to reach people on WhatsApp,” WhatsApp’s Vice President, Chris Daniels revealed to reporters in India.
This strategy is not new at all for Facebook. We have seen them employ a similar strategy with Instagram, where they introduced Stories in August 2016 and later on started serving ads on that medium.
WhatsApp Status use has gone up quite significantly and you can bet it is because of WhatsApp’s large user base of over 1.5 billion. Over 450 million people use Status everyday and these are the kind of figures Facebook likes to brag about.
This is also a chance for businesses to create ads to target that crucial WhatsApp demographic, which is quite popular in some markets, especially in developing nations. In markets like Kenya where WhatsApp is used more than Facebook or Instagram, serving ads on this platform would make more sense for advertisers than any other platform.
This move coupled with their continued improvement of WhatsApp Business could finally make WhatsApp a cash cow like their other assets. Facebook recently released their Q3 results and they have increased their net earnings by 13% year on year and making WhatsApp fully monetized could mean higher earnings for them and better share performance at the stock market.
