Facebook has been long reported to introduce ads in WhatsApp. According to the latest report by The Information, the company is still looking into ways, although it has failed multiple times over the past few months.
WhatsApp is a free to use instant messaging service used by billions of users worldwide. However, it did not start as free since initially, the app had a subscription fee, which was later reduced to $1/year with a free trial for a year. But that begun to change as the company started to cancel subscriptions for random regular users. And at last, it became fully free for all the existing as well as new users in early 2016
Between all this, Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014 for $16 billion. Since then, there have been speculations on how the social giant will monetise the newly acquired platform. It became even more intense when the app went completely free.
Then, a report emerged in late 2018 regarding Facebook to bring ads in the then newly introduced status section in WhatsApp. Followed by that, another report in 2019 suggested ads will come to WhatsApp only after the unification of Facebook’s all messaging platforms including Instagram and Messenger.
But that may not happen anytime soon as the US FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is investigating an antitrust probe into Facebook. So only after passing that hurdle, ads on WhatsApp may become a reality. Until then, the most used instant messaging platform on the planet will remain ad-free.
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(Via)
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