author: Bart Swiatek
Facebook Doesn't Give up Advertising on WhatsApp
It seems that Facebook has not abandoned its plans to introduce ads to WhatsApp. The company wants this type of content to be personalised using data obtained on its social website.
IN A NUTSHELL:
- Facebook hasn't given up on ads in WhatsApp - they may appear later this year;
- The company wants to personalise them using information from its social website.
It looks like Facebook is still planning to introduce ads to the WhatsApp communication platform - the change is likely to be introduced this year, although the deadline may still be postponed. What's more, the company wants this type of content to be as personalized as possible and intends to use the information collected about users on its popular social website for this purpose. The news reached the journalists of The Information (via Techradar).
“As we’ve said before, ads in Status remains a long-term opportunity for WhatsApp, and we believe it will be a great way for people to discover a business that is important to them in the future. That hasn’t changed. But right now our focus is on building new features to help businesses connect with their customers and providing payments in a number of countries," WhatsApp representative told Techradar editors.
The personalization of advertisements is to be possible thanks to a far-reaching integration of the different platforms owned by Facebook (we mentioned this in the news about the new Messenger). This means that the content displayed in WhatsApp will potentially be matched to the user, also using data from Instagram. The ID that will allow for matching it properly is to be the phone number.
The reports about adds in WhatsApp have appeared several times in the past - Marek Zuckerberg's company reportedly planned to introduce them even before taking over the platform. The last time such news appeared in May last year. The intentions of Facebook aroused a lot of controversy at that time and it seemed that the company eventually decided to withdraw from it - at least as suggested by the January text by The Wall Street Journal journalists. Unfortunately, the users' joy was probably premature.