Meta Dismisses Report Claiming Ads Could Come to WhatsApp

Meta has dismissed a report claiming that the company was exploring introducing ads on WhatsApp. According to the Financial Times, there have been internal conversations about how to monetize the messaging app, which currently has over 2 billion users.

“According to three people familiar with the matter, these conversations have explored showing ads in lists of conversations with contacts on the WhatsApp chat screen,” the report reads. “No final decisions have been made, they said.”

The report also mentions that there have been other internal discussions about introducing a subscription to get an ad-free experience on WhatsApp, but that “many insiders are against the move.” Anyway, Meta said that this isn’t true in a statement shared with the Financial Times ahead of the publication of the original report.

“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,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said. Head of WhatsApp Will Cathcart added in a separate statement posted on X that “This @FT story is false. We aren’t doing this.”

WhatsApp is currently one of the biggest messaging apps on the market along with Facebook Messenger, and despite Meta’s business model relying heavily on advertising, the company has yet to introduce apps on WhatsApp. However, the messaging app does make money from WhatsApp Business, with organizations using the service being charged per conversation.

Meta could certainly find other ways to monetize WhatsApp in the future. If the company is apparently against the idea of a subscription to get an ad-free experience, the company could look at what Telegram and Discord did by making additional features available via a subscription.