WhatsApp head Will Cathcart says in a response to an article by the Financial Times that the chat service will not contain advertisements. According to the newspaper, those involved have reported that Meta, the parent company of the chat app, is considering this.
Cathcart says in a tweet emphatically that the chat service does not consider showing advertisements in the chat app in order to generate more revenue. The Financial Times wrote based on statements from several ‘persons involved’ that Meta employees would have considered this. The newspaper wrote: “Teams at Meta are considering whether to show ads in the conversations list in the WhatsApp app, but no concrete decisions have been made yet. (…) The concept is being discussed at high levels within the company; there are concerns that this strategy could deter users.”
In a statement to the newspaper, WhatsApp said: “We cannot take every conversation within our company into account, but we test [het advertentieconcept] No, we are not working on this and we do not intend to.” It is not clear to what extent Meta influences decision-making at WhatsApp, although when the chat service was taken over by the then Facebook, it was claimed that WhatsApp would remain independent Nevertheless, Facebook publicly said a few years ago that there were plans for advertising in WhatsApp.
There has been uncertainty about WhatsApp’s revenue model since the takeover of the service in 2014. Around that period, the app still cost a small amount per year, but that was abolished not long afterwards. A former WhatsApp CEO also said in 2018 that advertisements would become the main revenue model of the service. This employee resigned a year later and so far no advertisements have been shown in the chat service. In 2020, the company did introduce a paid version of WhatsApp for businesses.
This @FT story is false. We aren’t doing this.
Also it looks like you misspelled Brian’s name…
—Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) September 15, 2023