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Meta has officially started rolling out ads in WhatsApp’s “Status” section. The in-app adverts appear to be similar to Instagram Stories, making it a big change for the popular messaging app.

Ads Arrive, But Only in One Spot

If you check the Updates tab on WhatsApp, you will spot sponsored posts pop up between your friends’ statuses. The ads might appear only after you have scrolled through a few status updates from your friends.

The Status screen is where Meta has chosen to test ads while leaving private chats untouched for now. The move is part of a broader plan to finally monetize WhatsApp’s popularity.

In short, the company wants to make money without spooking our privacy concerns.

Meta says these ads won’t rely on personal message content or phone numbers. Instead, they’ll be targeted using general data like location, device language, channels you follow, and the ads you interact with. Your account preferences stored with Meta will also influence the ads you see.

WhatsApp shared its intent in a blog post:

We’ve worked over the last two years to make this tab the place for you to discover something new on WhatsApp and it’s now used by 1.5 billion people a day. We’re encouraged by the enthusiasm and also want to help admins, organizations, and businesses grow on WhatsApp.

Alongside ads, Meta is also rolling out paid tools for businesses and creators. These include:

• Promoted Channels to boost discoverability
• Subscription Channels where creators can charge followers for exclusive content Interestingly, Meta won’t take a cut of these subscriptions for the first year. Maybe this is to attract early adopters. Taken together, these updates signal WhatsApp isn’t just a messaging app anymore. Meta wants it to become a full-fledged business platform, much like WeChat in China.

Ads Without Intrusion (For Now)

With over 3 billion users, WhatsApp is one of the last major Meta products not pulling in big ad dollars. The Updates section alone has 1.5 billion daily views. That’s a lot of untapped eyeballs.

But Meta also knows WhatsApp users value privacy. By limiting ads to Status updates and not chats, it’s threading the needle carefully. If you don’t use Status for its sharing features, you may not even notice anything has changed.

But WhatsApp is maturing. An app cannot run for free forever. For years, it stayed free of ads while its sister apps, Facebook and Instagram, went for the billions with monetization. Now, it’s on the same road, but with a gingerly step. Ads are here, yes, but only in a space that already feels public. I won’t mind ads on the Status screen if Meta can keep chats untouched and my privacy intact.