Reports claim the idea has been discussed among Meta’s bosses
Meta made a staggering $31.5bn from adverts in the second quarter of 2023, but not a penny of this came from WhatsApp. Most of it was generated by ads on Facebook and Instagram. So far, Meta has resisted the temptation to shove ads into WhatsApp. But a report in the Financial Times recently claimed that Meta managers have been discussing it.
It’s easy to see why. More than two billion people use WhatsApp every month – making it the world’s most popular messaging service – but most of its money comes from the 200 million businesses that pay to send messages to customers. Netflix, for example, sends subscribers personalised updates and recommendations.
Meta doesn’t reveal WhatsApp’s revenue, but analysts estimate that it made $1.06 billion in the second quarter. This is a mere three per cent of Meta’s total revenue. Despite its popularity, WhatsApp punches severely below its weight when it comes to making money.
Would adverts change this? Some Meta bosses think so, the FT said. One option that’s reportedly been looked at would be to show ads in the lists of conversations with your contacts on the main WhatsApp chat screen (as pictured), similar to how they appear among chats in Facebook Messenger and emails in Outlook and Gmail.
Ed East, head of ad agency Billion Dollar Boy, told the FT there is “certainly plenty of opportunity when it comes to advertising on WhatsApp”, and that marketing firms found it an “appealing prospect”.
However, he also said that many users would find adverts “intrusive”. This fear has “triggered debates at a high level” within Meta, the FT claimed. Managers are worried that annoyed users would stop using WhatsApp.
The FT said another idea being examined is charging users a subscription fee to use WhatsApp without adverts. Such ‘advert-free’ services are becoming increasingly common online, with Amazon, ITVX, Netflix and YouTube all removing them if you pay for a more expensive package than the standard one.
Talks of subscriptions hark back to how WhatsApp used to make money, which was by charging $1 to download the app, then $1 every year going forward. Meta scrapped that fee in 2016, two years after buying WhatsApp for $19bn. Its aim back then was to charge businesses enough money to se
