On Friday, the senior head of WhatsApp refuted a report from the Financial Times that claimed the Meta Platforms-owned (META.O) messaging platform was considering incorporating adverts into its service to increase revenue.
This story from the FT is not true. Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, stated in a post on the social media network X, once known as Twitter, that “We are not doing this.”
According to the story, teams at Meta were reportedly debating whether or not to include advertisements in lists of talks with contacts on the WhatsApp chat interface; however, the report cited persons familiar with the situation as saying that no final decisions had been taken.
According to FT, Meta was also considering whether or not to require users to pay a monthly fee to use the app without being bothered by advertisements.
The business WhatsApp informed the Financial Times in a statement that “we can’t account for every conversation someone had in our company, but we are not testing this, working on it, and it’s not our plan at all.”
The Financial Times reported that numerous firm insiders held negative opinions over the move.
A response from Meta did not immediately meet a request for comment from Reuters.
In 2014, Facebook paid $19 billion to acquire WhatsApp, a messaging program that was and has always been free.
Already, Meta has been working toward the goal of increasing revenue from WhatsApp. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, predicted that WhatsApp and Messenger would be the primary drivers of the company’s next wave of sales growth. He also stated that business messaging was “probably going to be the next major pillar” of the company’s business.
As of June this year, the WhatsApp Business application served more than 200 million users. This represents a rise of around fourfold compared to roughly three years earlier.
