Whatsapp has decided to take advantage of the 450 million daily active users of the status feature by introducing advertisements on the platform.
According to the Wall Street Journal, WhatsApp will show advertisements (ads) in the Status section from next year onwards. The status feature allows the users to share photos, videos, GIFs and even texts with their friends that disappear automatically after 24 hours.
Before the acquisition of WhatsApp by the social networking giant Facebook, the instant messaging application did charge an annual fee from its users. However, since 2016 it has been free to use WhatsApp.
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WhatsApp Status is the most successful of Facebook’s Stories’ portfolio, at least in terms of user numbers, with 450 million people using WhatsApp Status every day while Instagram reported 400 million daily actives of Instastories, a similar feature to that of Whatsapp.
The ads that will be displayed in WhatsApp will be powered by Facebook’s advertising platform.
WhatsApp says that these types of advertisements would help familiarize users with business on WhatsApp.
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