Messaging app WhatsApp has introduced adverts for the first time, a departure from the anti-ad ethos it had when first set up.
The famous bright green app had been unusual in major tech apps in not allowing adverts on the platform.
‘We don’t sell ads’, they said in a 2012 blog post quoting Tyler Durden from Fight Club: ‘Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.’
Now, even they will be sending us to chase cars, clothes, doggy sunglasses, and mini washing machines for underwear that fit on your bedside table.
A new post titled, euphemistically, ‘Helping you Find More Channels and Businesses on WhatsApp’, revealed the change yesterday.
For now, ads will only be seen in the Updates tab.
This means you won’t see ads for vitamins or foot scrubs popping up in between your private messages.
The company said: ‘If you only use WhatsApp to chat with friends and loved ones there is no change to your experience at all.’
But it marks a shift towards becoming more like Meta’s ad-heavy other big apps, Instagram and Facebook.
For now, ads will only appear in Status, which is similar to the 24-hour Stories function on their other apps.
How will apps be targeted?
Meta said they had built these features ‘in the most private way possible’: ‘Your personal messages, calls, and statuses remain end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one (not even us) can see or hear them.’
They said they would use information like country or city, language, Channels followed, and previous ad interaction to guide which ads are shown.
Those who had added WhatsApp to Accounts Center could be shown ads based on information from across their other Meta accounts too.
They promised they would ‘never sell or share your phone number to advertisers’ and personal messages and calls would not be used for targeted ads.
What did WhatsApp say about ads previously?
A 2012 blog post from founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton said: ‘No one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they’ll see tomorrow.
‘We know people go to sleep excited about who they chatted with that day (and disappointed about who they didn’t). We want WhatsApp to be the product that keeps you awake… and that you reach for in the morning. No one jumps up from a nap and runs to see an advertisement.
‘Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought.
‘At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it’s all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out… And at the end of the day the result of it all is a slightly different advertising banner in your browser or on your mobile screen.
‘Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product.
‘At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That’s our product and that’s our passion. Your data isn’t even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it.
‘When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say “Have you considered the alternative?’
‘The beginning of deeper data collection’?
Meta has insisted that personal messages will be unchanged, but some fear this move could be opening the door to more significant changes later.
Marijus Briedis, Chief Technology Officer at NordVPN, said: ‘Ads in WhatsApp aren’t just a distraction – they’re a signal of what may come next.
‘When advertising enters a messaging app, it often marks the beginning of deeper data collection. Meta says your chats are private, but its business model relies on data-driven surveillance. This isn’t just about pop-ups; it’s about protecting your privacy.
‘Europe’s data protection laws were created to guard against exactly this kind of gradual overreach. Meta’s so-called ‘optional’ data-sharing is rarely as optional as it sounds – there’s often a trade-off, and too often, that trade-off is your personal information.
‘We’ve seen this pattern before, with small updates that pave the way for much bigger changes. The introduction of ads could signal a wider shift away from private messaging toward monetised, monitored communication. European users should pay close attention – your messages may not stay as private as you think.’
Was WhatsApp always free?
No. In its early years, there was an annual subscription fee of $0.99 (which worked out at around 64p to 69p in the UK).
Imposed after the first year (which was free), this was part the reason they could afford to go without ads.
When Facebook bought the company in 2016, they scrapped the charge to focus on growth, saying some users were worried about losing access if they didn’t have a debit or credit card number.
They still didn’t introduce ads at the time, saying they wanted to explore other ways of making money from WhatsApp, like making the app a tool to communicate information with businesses and organisations such as banks and airlines.
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