WhatsApp goes back and will not show ads (for now)

0
124
WhatsApp goes back and will not show ads (for now)
WhatsApp goes back and will not show ads (for now)

whatsapp adsMark Zuckerberg announced more than a year ago that, among the plans that Facebook had for monetizing WhatsApp they was going to start including ads in the app. However, despite having been working for more than a year in the role, it seems that they have finally scrapped the idea.

The WhatsApp ads were going to be present in the States, similar to what happens on Instagram that appear sandwiched between the Stories of the people we follow. The feature was to be available earlier this year, but according to The Information, they have cancelled all plans to include ads.

WhatsApp Pay and Business: the only current monetization channels

Monetizing WhatsApp has been one of Facebook’s goals since they bought the app six years ago. WhatsApp is the most used messaging application in the world, but that by itself does not generate money. Since they removed the payment of an annual euro, the app has been without generating cash for years. Therefore they decided to launch WhatsApp Business, where companies, in exchange for paying WhatsApp, can offer a direct or sales technical service to users directly in their WhatsApp application.

Later they released WhatsApp Pay, but at the moment it is available in countries like India. This is probably the monetization path they’ll go for, even though in-state ads was also a subtle way to earn revenue in the app even though hardly anyone uses them. However, they feared that public opinion would come against them because nobody wanted to see ads in the app.

SEE ALSO  The WhatsApp trick so you don't forget to reply to any message

They could resume the announcements in the future.

Ads on WhatsApp were going to generate billions of dollars a year in revenue, which little by little would have helped Facebook to recover part of the investment that they made in WhatsApp of 22,000 million dollars. However, public opinion seems to be the only reason they have decided to cancel its launch, in addition to the fact that it appears that they will try to find other ways to monetize for the future. The cancellation at the moment would be temporary, so in the future, they may decide to resume the plans.

Although the initial criticism is usually quite sharp, then people end up getting used to it. When Facebook bought Instagram, it had no ads, but little by little they began to put them in the Stories and in the feed, where they do not become too annoying because they can be skipped fast.

Unfortunately, there are no alternatives to Instagram. Still, there are many alternatives to WhatsApp, as in the case of Signal or Telegram, where the latter has received a new flurry of users in recent weeks after WhatsApp limited the number of forwardings. Telegram is much better at everything, and any misstep WhatsApp takes can mean losing hundreds of thousands and even millions of users.