WhatsApp on Monday announced that it will soon introduce advertisements and other paid features in a major shift for the messaging app, which has mostly remained ad-free since its launch. The move marks WhatsApp’s most significant step toward monetisation since it was acquired by Meta in 2014.

WHATSAPP has announced plans for a brand new feature that requires users to pay fees. The popular messaging app has revealed a wave of changes coming soon. However, WhatsApp has assured its

The company stressed that users who only use WhatsApp for personal messaging will see no changes to their experience, as all new features are confined to the Updates tab that can

The cofounders of WhatsApp resisted ads in the app for years, including after the company was acquired by Meta for $22 billion in 2014. Brian Acton and Jan Koum left the company in 2017 and 2018, respectively, and on Monday Meta introduced ads in the “Status” feature as well as sponsored Channels in the the “Updates” tab of WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is introducing three new advertising features in a global rollout, marking a significant step towards monetisation

The Status tab is valuable screen real estate. Meta says more than 1.5 billion people use it every day. Advertising is still by far the company's largest stream of revenue so the only really surprising thing about Meta starting to show ads in WhatsApp is that it took so long.

As per Meta's Newsroom, advertisements will appear only in the "Updates" tab — a separate tab at the bottom of the app, which showcases both "Channels" and "Status" features. Users can subscribe to friends and other public channels, and post statuses of their own, akin to Instagram 's subscription and "Stories" features.

The Meta-owned platform has just issued an alert telling its fans not to miss out on a swathe of new features that are aimed at improving the messaging experience.