WhatsApp advertising is the not-too-distant future of the instant messaging application. How WhatsApp Advertising Will Be Like In 2020 (Part I)
WhatsApp starting to show ads is something many people feared. Last November its vice president Chris Daniels confirmed in an interview that this will be a reality by 2020.
The initiative is an attempt to monetize the application and make it profitable for the more than 1.5 billion users who use it.
The only thing Daniels made clear at the time was that WhatsApp advertising would appear in the “status”.
Although he didn’t give a specific date today we know when and how this advertising will look. This is thanks to the fact that in May Facebook showed how WhatsApp’s new advertising tools will be implemented during the Facebook Marketing Summit 2019 held in Rotterdam.
In fact, Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for the outrageous figure of 19 billion dollars.
Initially, it did not consider placing advertising or making the application profitable in any way.
However, the huge increase in their number of users has made them see this as a gold mine.
So they have finally decided to take advantage of it. If you want to know more about how the ads will appear on WhatsApp and if this will affect the use of the application read on.
- Monetizing WhatsApp through advertising
- What will WhatsApp advertising mean for brands?
- WhatsApp Marketing Advantages
- How We Will View Advertising on WhatsApp
- Advertising in Whatsapp status
- Advertising in chat windows
- How the advertising campaigns for the brands will work
- At the moment the advertising option is WhatsApp Business
1. Monetizing WhatsApp through advertising
WhatsApp in its beginnings requested the payment of 99 cents to use its service for one year. This changed in 2016 when they retired subscription mode. They assured then that WhatsApp would always be free of advertising. Today, however, the reality is quite different.
According to Daniels, this is going to be the first step to start monetizing the application and offer companies the opportunity to reach their target audiences through WhatsApp.
It is true that being a massively used application, with more than 1500 million users, WhatsApp advertising is a huge niche to exploit.
However, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton believes in this regard that “to advertise on WhatsApp is to break a contract they had with the user. And it is true that if the use of WhatsApp is so widespread is partly because it has always been free and not have advertising.
2. What will WhatsApp advertising mean for brands?
WhatsApp is the most used social network in Spain, ahead even of Facebook. It is estimated that there are some 25 million active users in the country. How can it not be profitable for brands to do advertising campaigns on Whatsapp?
In addition, according to the IAB report on social networks 2019, users spend an average of 1.47 hours consulting this application. It also points out that the average number of visits per day is 6 times and the percentages of use by age range are similar for all bands. What we get is a large number of heterogeneous people, but all connected and willing to receive messages.
Thanks to the impact WhatsApp has on people’s daily lives, there are a number of opportunities in the use of this application.
So it’s interesting to start evaluating the possibility of doing paid advertising campaigns on it.
3. WhatsApp Marketing Advantages
- Large number of daily displays. This greatly increases the chances of generating leads and conversions. The more times people consult Whatsapp, the more ads they will see.
- User knowledge. It will also be a means to significantly increase your database, since it is necessary to register with a mobile number.
- Ease of use from the WhatsApp website. Although it is usual to access WhatsApp from the mobile device, other possibilities are also opened for other advertising formats from the desktop application.
- It is one of the advertising strategies with the highest number of impressions. If it is a fact that people spend a lot of time consulting WhatsApp, it is logical to think that the advertising included in it will have a lot of impressions.
- A high CTR. WhatsApp currently has a quite high return on investment. People are very used to its use and by implementing non-intrusive advertising within the application, it is possible that users will continue to accept ads well on the platform.
4. How We Will View Advertising on WhatsApp
To reassure users, WhatsApp executives initially made it clear that advertising would not appear in chat windows.
This responds to the need not to hinder conversations.
In addition, it would also avoid being intrusive and annoying, and that far from being effective, users choose to use other messaging applications.
You can continue reading at: How WhatsApp Advertising Will Be Like In 2020 (Part II)
