The three ad features aim to help organsiations and businesses grow on WhatsApp. Photo: WhatsApp
Note: This article was first published on 17 Jun 2025.
After years of maintaining WhatsApp as an ad-free platform, Meta announced that it is rolling out three new ad features on the platform. The platform reportedly made over US$160 billion in ad revenue.
Designed to help admins, organisations, and businesses grow on WhatsApp, the three features are:
- Channel subscriptions: WhatsApp users can support their favourite channels by subscribing to receive exclusive content for a monthly fee.
- Promoted Channels: Admins can increase their Channel's visibility through paid promotions.
- Ads in Status: Businesses can promote ads in Status and interact with WhatsApp users who have questions about the advertised product or service.
Ads will appear in the Updates tab, in Status and in Channels. Photo: WhatsApp
Meta emphasises that the three ad features are built with user privacy in mind. First, these ad features will appear only on the Updates tab. This is crucial because it means you will not see ads in your chats.
Second, Meta cannot use personally identifiable information, such as phone numbers, as personal messages, calls, and statuses remain end-to-end encrypted. Also, it will never sell or share phone numbers to advertisers.
Third, it only relies on limited information such as country or city, language, the Channels you're following, and your ad interactions, to serve ads in Status.
Meta did not specify a time frame for when these features will roll out. We will update this article when we have the information.
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