WhatsApp has more than 1.5 billion users and it is still ad free. Earlier, there were plans to ask users to pay subscription charges of mere 99 cents but then, the co-founders squashed the idea which saw a huge incline in user base. Later, Facebook Inc bought WhatsApp for $22 billion and since, it has introduced several features and tools yet keeping the app ad free not it won’t remain the same for too long.
With more than a billion users on WhatsApp parent company Facebook, the latters growth has gone stagnant with its stock prices fluctuating considerably. This has forced Facebook to look to its various acquisitions in order to generate revenue that will help Facebook pay out its outlays. Following Facebook’s decision on monetizing WhatsApp, disagreements have flourished between WhatsApp co-founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum and top Facebook executives.
This led to the breakup of the two founders from WhatsApp which become headlines back in June this year. Back to Facebook, the stock prices of the largest social networking site have been tumbling. After Instagram was used to show ads to its user base of over a billion users which went extremely successful, it’s time for WhatsApp to decide how and where to put the ads to generate revenue.
More than 1.5 billion users on WhatsApp send 60 billion messages a day which is end-to-end encrypted. But only a fraction of these messages are actually sent and received by companies and consumers which is where WhatsApp will put up ads. According to the company, new ad types will be introduced so that users could know that they can directly message companies using WhatsApp without calling them and on this part, WhatsApp will charge the companies around 5 cents to 9 cents based on the country. Furthermore, WhatsApp will charge the companies even more for every unanswered message after 24 hours of receiving it.
A batch of 100 companies had already undergone testing on ‘WhatsApp Business’ app such as Uber Technologies, SIngapore Airlines Ltd, etc. Uber Technologies uses WhatsApp to resolve and answer queries of its drivers in India, Brazil, and Mexico. WhatsApp will keep all the messages exchanged between consumers and companies end-to-end encrypted, however, the companies in question could save the messages in decrypted form.
Starting next year, WhatsApp will start featuring ads on its ‘Status’ tool similar to how Instagram shows ads in its ‘Stories’ tool which is pretty much the same. According to the figures, more than 450 million people use WhatsApp Status will more than 400 million people use Stories on Instagram.
Executives at WhatsApp are learning the response of ads as shown on Instagram Stories accoridng to which, a strategy will be devised on how, when, and where to show the ads and other matters.
