Facebook's long term monetisation plan for WhatsApp may roll out soon

It seems WhatsApp is expanding its wing in a full-fledged manner. The Facebook-owned company, which has been in the final leg of launching UPI-based payments platform, is now thinking over monetisation.

As per media report, WhatsApp will leverage its 'Status' feature for advertisement. As of now, Status is widely used for sharing text, photos, videos, and GIFs that last for 24 hours.

It was the advertising-cum-monetisation model that led differences between Mark Zuckerberg and WhatsApp co-founder and former CEO Jan Koum. Koum later exited the company on the premise of differences.

The other co-founder Brian Acton who steered #DeleteFacebook campaign also opposed the monetisation model and slammed Zuckerberg for the same.

The fresh rumours come against the backdrop of WABetaInfo tweet, which hinted that "WhatsApp beta for Android 2.18.305: WhatsApp is implementing in this version ads for Status".

Further, the report claims that ads are coming to WhatsApp for iOS, and it is expected to come for the Android platform as well.

Entrackr has sent queries to WhatsApp regarding advertisement model. We'll update the post as response comes in.

Industry experts believe that the advertisements would be powered by Facebook's native advertising system through targeted ads and facilitate commercial messaging.

As India is one of the largest markets for WhatsApp, revenue via ad would be an easy model to implement in the country.

WhatsApp's experiments to make money is not new. In January, the company rolled out WhatsApp Business, to allow businesses to create a profile and send messages to their customers on the app.

While Acton and Koum started WhatsApp with a motto of having no ads, no games, no gimmicks, let's wait and watch how Facebook implements its long-term plan and generates ad revenue in future.