WhatsApp to start showing ads to users in parts of the messaging app

Key Points

• WhatsApp will begin showing ads in its Updates tab, used by up to 1.5 billion daily users, while personal chats remain ad-free and end-to-end encrypted.
• Ads will be targeted using user age, location, language, followed channels and ad interaction, but not personal messages, calls or group content.
• The move breaks WhatsApp’s 2009 promise to stay ad-free and underscores parent company Meta’s push to generate revenue from the messaging service.
• WhatsApp also unveiled two more monetization features: paid channel subscriptions for exclusive updates and promoted visibility options for business channels.

LONDON (AP) — WhatsApp said Monday that users will start seeing ads in parts of the app, as owner Meta Platforms moves to cultivate a new revenue stream by tapping the billions of people that use the messaging service.

Advertisements will be shown only in the app's Updates tab, which is used by as many as 1.5 billion people each day. However, they won't appear where personal chats are located, developers said.

“The personal messaging experience on WhatsApp isn’t changing, and personal messages, calls and statuses are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be used to show ads,” WhatsApp said in a blog post.

It’s a big change for the company, whose founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton vowed to keep the platform free of ads when they created it in 2009.

Facebook purchased WhatsApp in 2014 and the pair left a few years later. Parent company Meta Platforms Inc. has long been trying to generate revenue from WhatsApp.

WhatsApp said ads will be targeted to users based on information like their age, the country or city where they're located, the language they're using, the channels they're following in the app, and how they're interacting with the ads they see.

WhatsApp said it won't use personal messages, calls and groups that a user is a member of to target ads to the user.

It's one of three advertising features that WhatsApp unveiled on Monday as it tries to monetize the app's user base. Channels will also be able to charge users a monthly fee for subscriptions so they can get exclusive updates. And business owners will be able to pay to promote their channel's visibility to new users.

Most of Meta's revenue comes from ads. In 2025, the Menlo Park, California-based company's revenue totaled $164.5 billion and $160.6 billion of it came from advertising.