WhatsApp, the messaging app acquired by Facebook (now Meta) for $19 billion in 2014, will begin showing ads within its app for the first time. This represents a significant change for the platform, which has long maintained a strict ad-free experience for its two billion users worldwide.
From Monday, ads will appear exclusively in the app’s “Updates” section, an area used by around 1.5 billion people daily.
WhatsApp will collect limited user data such as location and device language to target these ads but insists that message content and personal conversations will remain private. The company reiterated that chats and calls will continue to be protected by end-to-end encryption.
Nikila Srinivasan, WhatsApp’s Vice President of Product Management, emphasised the importance of privacy in developing this feature. She reassured users that personal messages, calls, and statuses will remain secure despite the new advertising approach.
The move comes years after the departure of WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who prioritised a simple, secure messaging experience without ads. Since then, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has sought to integrate WhatsApp more closely with Facebook’s broader ecosystem, opening new revenue streams for the company.
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