Since the time Facebook paid the sum of $19bn to buy WhatsApp a few years ago, experts since then have been thinking how the company would monetise the instant messaging application. And now, that time seems to have finally arrived. WhatsApp will soon begin introducing advertisements within the application. The announcement about the move comes from Facebook directly during a marketing event held recently in Netherlands.
WhatsApp is an extremely famous instant messaging app across the world today. As such, even a small amount Facebook garners from advertisers on the basis of subscriber base should add huge revenue for it. Currently, just the intentions about such a plan have been expressed by the company while the date starting which ads would begin appearing on the application haven’t been disclosed yet.
On the other hand, according to WABetaInfo, a fan-site which tests the latest features of WhatsApp early, posted a tweet saying that the new ads for Status feature would be implemented in the beta version 2.18.305 for Android. Though the feature isn’t visible as of now, the feature will be enabled in the future, it further said.
Notably, Facebook had initially hinted about its plan of monetising the messaging app last year in October itself. The only hint currently on the timeline is that the company will introduce the feature starting 2020.