Meta Platforms on Monday announced that it's bringing advertising to WhatsApp, but emphasized that the ads are "built with privacy in mind."
The ads are expected to be displayed on the Updates tab through its Stories-like Status feature, which allows ephemeral sharing of photos, videos, voice notes, and text for 24 hours. These efforts are "rolling out gradually," per the company.
The media giant, which acquired WhatsApp for a record $19.3 billion in February 2014, first announced its plans for ads in Status way back in November 2018.
Meta also claimed that the ads implementation was developed in the "most privacy-oriented way possible" and that it only uses limited information to serve ads.
"Your personal messages, calls, and statuses remain end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one can see or hear them," the company said.
"To show ads in Status or Channels you might care about, we'll use limited info like your country or city, language, the Channels you're following, and how you interact with the ads you see."
It's worth noting that Meta will use ad preferences from across a user's accounts, including Facebook and Instagram, should they have added WhatsApp to the Accounts Center. Adding WhatsApp to Accounts Center is an optional setting, and is off by default.
The exact nature of the information collected includes -
- Country code and age (where applicable)
- Device information, such as language settings
- General location, like city or country
- Activity information on Status and Channels such as channels people follow, content people engage with in channels and how people interact with the ads they see
- Activity on Meta's other apps
Furthermore, Meta said it will neither sell or share users' phone numbers with marketers, nor will it tap into users' personal messages, calls, and groups for ad targeting.
"By default, WhatsApp removes or alters personal information (like phone numbers) before sharing it with Meta so that Meta cannot identify individuals and is only able to suggest ads that may appeal to people who share broad characteristics, such as people in the same general area," WhatsApp said.
WhatsApp has long been marketed as a more private and secure messaging platform. However, its foray into advertisements could color its reputation as the company tries to balance user features vis-à-vis monetizing the service.
The development comes as Meta has added a warning prompt to its Meta AI chatbot app before letting users share their artificial intelligence (AI) prompts to the public Discover feed, following reports of users accidentally sharing chats with sensitive personal information.
Privacy and security experts criticized the feature, with the Mozilla Foundation stating that the app does not make it clear that the prompts users share are accessible to anyone across the world.
"Prompts you post are public and visible to everyone. Your prompts may be suggested by Meta on other Meta apps. Avoid sharing personal or sensitive information," a message now reads. The change was first reported by Business Insider.