Will Ads Come to Status and Channel?

[tmonower958]

The local advertising industry was accordingly cautious in its reception. Although many brands such as Booking.com, Uber, Vodafone and o2 already offer WhatsApp Business, this is primarily an additional support channel for customer service. This means that customers primarily contact the brands via WhatsApp to clarify service issues and receive support. At EUR 0.06 per message, service messages are significantly cheaper than marketing messages. WhatsApp charges again every 24 hours if there are new messages within the conversation.

Now things could gain momentum again: There are increasing indications that Meta is working on two new placements on WhatsApp. On the one hand in the "News" category of WhatsApp slovenia whatsapp resource (formerly "Status"), in which companies and people can post story-like content, and on the other hand in the "WhatsApp Channels" launched in 2023. Anyone can now create a WhatsApp channel. Users can then join the channel and are informed about new messages in the channel. The whole thing works similarly to an email newsletter, just on WhatsApp. In contrast to WhatsApp Business Messages, however, users cannot reply to messages. The admin publishes messages and the target group can only react with emojis.


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Back in 2019, developers had already found the first signs of advertisements being delivered in WhatsApp Status's code. This was followed by a real wave of outrage from users - partly because the former management had consistently spoken out against any form of advertising. Meta then put its plans for WhatsApp advertising on hold for the time being.

Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp, confirmed in November last year that there were no plans to display advertisements in the user chat interface. Chat messages and group chats on the platform are end-to-end encrypted. Meta itself cannot access the information in the chats and use it for targeting. Users' chats are and will remain private.

However, the content of status and channels is comparatively public and therefore more suitable for advertising. Meta is currently not testing advertisements in WhatsApp status in any target market, but they expressly reserve the right to do so. It is therefore quite conceivable that we will see the first tests in the area of ​​status and channels in 2024.