WhatsApp has announced that, thanks to having a huge and captive audience, it's getting ready to make the experience just a little bit worse for everyone. So prepare thyself for three new ad features which are being rolled out globally across the popular messaging app (thanks, BBC).
The messaging platform is owned by Meta, and claims to have 1.5 billion global users. The new ads will not appear in peoples' private chats, say WhatsApp, nor will any of your (encrypted) message contents be used to personalise ads. Instead WhatsApp will use the location and language of the user to tailor ads, alongside their follows and what ads they interact with.
With one bit of small print: if your WhatsApp is linked to your Facebook or Instagram, then you'll see more personalised ads based on all the data Meta's constantly hoovering up from there.
The new ads appear in a section called "Updates", which I've just checked out. It's trying to make me follow an account called "meme land", as well as "Labourer Jobs UK" for some reason. Businesses can pay to promote ads in this section and offer users paid subscriptions, and can also advertise through status updates that resemble Instagram stories and will start an AI chat if clicked on. WhatsApp is, needless to say, creaming off a minimum 10% commission which can increase depending on a given business's size.
The only positive of this change, as far as I can see, is that these ads won't be muscling in on the chats and groups, which is the only reason any of us use WhatsApp anyway. Social media commenter Matt Navarra describes it as "monetising the periphery" to the BBC, adding that Meta is "laying the foundation" for monetising WhatsApp at greater scale. Oh goody.
The flipside is that no-one really uses WhatsApp for news or feeds or adverts: it's for communication with your mates and family. So whether most users will ever even see these things is up in the air, though we all know Meta can be as annoying as every other big tech company when it really wants to get something in front of your eyeballs.
Do you know who does think this is a good thing? Take a bow WhatsApp boss Will Cathcart, who's rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of further aligning the messaging platform with Facebook and Instagram.
"Obviously there's overlap," said Cathcart, stroking a small and hairless white cat (I made that bit up). "We have stories on Instagram and stories on WhatsApp, and we now have a way for businesses to promote themselves in both, and we think that's a good thing."
For his part, Navarra thinks this is the beginnings of Meta "trying to to turn WhatsApp into a platform without users realising it, and if they move too fast or it starts to feel like another ad network, people might disengage or, maybe worse, distrust the app."
WhatsApp is also pushing this change on users not long after adding Meta's AI tool to the app, which sparked a backlash from users angry they couldn't opt out. Meta's handling of WhatsApp now stands in stark contrast to privacy-focused messaging app Signal, where the leadership has pledged "no AI clutter, and no surveillance ads, whatever the rest of the industry does."
I suspect that recent AI backlash may be why these WhatsApp ads are initially hived-off in a side feature of the app, but of course that doesn't mean that's where they're going to live forever. "I want to stress this won't affect your inbox," said Cathcart. "If you're only using WhatsApp for messaging, you're not going to see this." He neglected to add "for now."
