On Friday, the top head of WhatsApp denied a Financial Times report that said the Meta Platforms-owned (META.O) messaging platform was exploring advertisements as it sought to boost revenue.
In a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said “This @FT story is false. We aren’t doing this.”
The report said that teams at Meta were concerned about whether to display advertisements in lists of conversations with contacts on the WhatsApp chat screen, but no final conclusions had been made, quoting people familiar with the matter.
Meta was also contemplating whether to charge a subscription fee to use the app ad-free, FT added.
Whats App told in the statement that the FT that “we can’t account for every conversation someone had in our company but we are not testing this, working on it, and it’s not our plan at all.”
FT also said many firm insiders opposed the move.
Facebook purchased WhatsApp, which has always been an ad-free and cost-free chat app, in 2014 for $19 billion.
Meta has already been operating to boost revenue from WhatsApp. CEO Mark Zuckerberg last year said that WhatsApp and Messenger would push the firm’s next wave of sales growth, with business messaging “likely going to be the next major pillar” of the business of Meta.
WhatsApp’s Business application catered to more than 200 million users on its platform, as of June this year, a four-fold increase from about three years ago.
