Goodbye, WhatsApp Ads: Zuckerberg reverses his plans to include advertising in the app

SUSANA GALEANOJANUARY  ,  
Goodbye, WhatsApp Ads: Zuckerberg reverses his plans to include advertising in the app
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After months of carrying out an intense search to monetize WhatsApp, Facebook has decided to reverse its plan to show advertising in the app . According to information published in The Wall Street Journal , Facebook has said goodbye to the idea of WhatsApp Ads.




“In recent months, WhatsApp disbanded a task force that had been established to find the best way to integrate ads into the service, according to people familiar with the matter. “Teamwork was eliminated from the WhatsApp code,” the media stated in its publication.


That is, even though WhatsApp currently has more than 1.5 billion users, it will not contribute to Facebook's overall revenue in the short term, at least not through WhatsApp Ads.


A long fight to monetize WhatsApp
In  , Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion with the clear objective of expa Email Data nding its global empire and taking advantage of the popularity that the instant messaging platform has had since then, and of course, to represent a gold mine of income for the company.


At that time WhatsApp generated around $ million per year, as the platform charged a fee of $1 per year for its service in certain regions. Upon passing into the hands of Facebook, this subscription fee was eliminated, and plans were launched to create WhatsApp Ads, a way to monetize the app by including ads in your messages.




However, one thing Zuckerberg has learned is that monetizing private messaging apps is not easy, despite their immense popularity and use.


And, especially on WhatsApp, user privacy has become the focus , especially through elements such as end-to-end encryption.


Without being able to access in-depth user data, and without the ability to include ads in the middle of private messages, Facebook has not been able to establish a clear path to integrate WhatsApp Ads.




Among the ideas raised by the social network, the one launched during  stands out, when the social media giant explained that it was working to include ads within WhatsApp statuses, very similar to stories, since they would be  much less invasive than ads within private messages. However, this idea was not good enough, and now even the idea of ads in the states has passed away.


Goodbye WhatsApp Ads, hello WhatsApp Pay
The Wall Street Journal stated that “ for now, the focus will be on features that allow companies to communicate with customers, and organize those contacts”, that is, it will remain as is.





Of course, it would be more than strange for Zuckerberg to completely forget the monetization of one of his main platforms, one of the most used worldwide and for which he paid a fortune.


[Tweet “Facebook has not been able to establish a path to integrate ads in WhatsApp”]


So the most logical approach, for now, is that the monetization of the messaging application will probably fall on its WhatsApp Pay payment system , in addition to being able to facilitate the purchase and sale of products within the app.


In August last year, Facebook was in talks with regulators and potential business partners in India and Indonesia to facilitate the arrival of WhatsApp Pay in both markets.


These two regions have a combined base of 500 million WhatsApp users, making them the ideal place to obtain revenue from the messaging platform in this way, at least in the immediate term.