WhatsApp will soon display ads – Why could this cause negative reactions in Europe?
WhatsApp will now start showing ads on the popular messaging app after years of offering the service for free without any strings attached. WhatsApp said users will start seeing ads in parts of the app as owner Meta Platforms moves to cultivate a new revenue stream by tapping into the billions of people who use the messaging service.
The ads will only appear in the app's Updates tab, which is used by up to 1.5 billion people every day. However, they will not appear where personal conversations are located, the developers said. "The personal messaging experience on WhatsApp is not changing, and personal messages, calls, and statuses are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be used to display ads, " WhatsApp said in a blog post on Monday.
It's a big change for the company, whose founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton pledged to keep the platform ad-free when they launched it in 2009. Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014 and the pair left a few years later. Parent company Meta Platforms Inc. has long struggled to generate revenue from WhatsApp.
WhatsApp said ads will be targeted to users based on information such as their age, country or city they are in, the language they speak, the channels they follow on the app and how they interact with the ads they see. WhatsApp said it will not use personal messages, calls and groups a user is a member of to target ads to the user.
The European Commission signaled last year that the move was incompatible with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The European Center for Digital Rights (noyb), led by privacy activist Max Schrems, said that Meta's "Pay or Okay" approach effectively forces users to choose between privacy and affordability.
"Meta is doing exactly the opposite of what EU law requires, " Schrems said in a statement. " The data of its various platforms is linked and users are tracked for advertising without any real choice. Without freely given consent, linking data and displaying personalized ads is clearly illegal," he added.
Noyb said he would review Meta's actions and "initiate proceedings against the company" if necessary. The details depend on Meta's practical implementation and therefore cannot yet be definitively assessed. Schrems said he expected a WhatsApp exit on the messaging app Signal. "Signal works just as well as WhatsApp, but it is non-profit and funded by donations ," he said.
WhatsApp unveiled three advertising features 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 receive exclusive updates.
Business owners will also be able to pay to promote their channel’s visibility to new users. The majority of Meta’s revenue comes from advertising. In 2025, the Menlo Park, California-based company’s revenue reached $164.5 billion (€142 billion), and $160.6 billion (€138 billion) of that came from advertising.
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