All WhatsApp users to be affected by latest huge change to the app

WhatsApp is one of the most popular apps in the UK for keeping up with friends and family. For many people it is used daily instead of the standard Messages apps on the iPhone and Android phones, favoured for both its popularity and perceived simplicity and ease of use.

Owned by Meta, which also owns Facebook, Messenger and Instragram, WhatsApp has been free of the one thing that fuels both those other apps, until this week - advertising.

In a blog post, WhatsApp announced it is introducing ads for the first time in the app for all users globally. These ads will appear in the Updates tab where you can view the Status of your contacts or followed accounts. Status is WhatsApp’s version of Instagram Stories, where you can post short images, videos or text that disappears after 24 hours.

Now, WhatsApp is starting to introduce ads to this part of the app.

“You’ll be able to find a new business and easily start a conversation with them about a product or service they’re promoting in Status,” is how Meta describes this huge change.

The firm was quick to downplay the introduction of advertising to the app that is estimated to be used by three billion people worldwide, according to Statista.

“These new features will appear only on the Updates tab, away from your personal chats. This means if you only use WhatsApp to chat with friends and loved ones there is no change to your experience at all.”

When WhatsApp was acquired by Meta (then Facebook) in 2014, it prided itself on the fact it was free and without ads. Although it has taken 11 years, there was a certain inevitability of Meta, a company that makes a large percentage of its revenue through advertising on its other products, putting ads in WhatsApp eventually.

It comes just weeks after Meta added its Meta AI tool to WhatsApp, an artitficial intelligence chatbot which cannot be removed or turned off. Meta is able to read any messages the AI is tagged in by users, even though all other WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted by default.

“We will never sell or share your phone number to advertisers,” Meta said of the addition of ads to WhatsApp. Your personal messages, calls and groups you are in will not be used to determine the ads you may see.”

This means you shouldn’t start seeing ads in your Chats list or anywhere you might message or call people. This is unlike Facebook Messenger, where the app often shows full line ads in between your list of chats.

"I want to stress this won't affect your inbox," WhatsApp head Will Cathcart told the BBC.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn5y07yqg5do

"If you're only using WhatsApp for messaging, you're not going to see this."

As well as the new ads, Meta announced new channel subscriptions where you can subscribe to content creators’ channels for a monthly fee, as well as the Explore button now showing promoted channels.