WhatsApp will start displaying Ads in 2020: Here’s What they Look Like

11 June, 2019 — James Brandon

Being one of the most popular instant messaging apps, WhatsApp has a lot of global users. This makes it a great platform for advertisements. Since its acquisition by Facebook in 2014, stakeholders at the company have been thinking of how to monetize the app.

While at a Facebook Marketing Summit that was held in Rotterdam, Netherlands, it was revealed that WhatsApp will begin displaying Ads by 2020. The Ads will appear within WhatsApp Status as they do on Instagram and Facebook Stories.

The Ads will display companies’ names instead of the contact name as displayed in the normal Status. The Ads will also occupy the whole screen and have a swipe-up feature that will navigate to the company’s main site.

Olivier Ponteville from BeConnectAgency who seems to have attended the Marketing Summit in Rotterdam posted a tweet showing the ads feature development. The new development was later posted by Matt Navarra, a social media guru, thus confirming the plans from WhatsApp.

Reports indicated that WhatsApp Android beta version 2.18.305 included ads in the Status section. However, the changes are yet to be experienced by users using the normal WhatsApp version; not until 2020.

Apart from the ad displaying feature, WhatsApp engineers are working on improving the experience for WhatsApp Business users. The improvements will ensure that the Business version will have PDF + text and image + text formats. WhatsApp product catalog will also be integrated within the existing Facebook Business Manager catalog.