Facebook is backing away from efforts to sell ads in WhatsApp, in a retreat from a controversial plan that drove the creators of WhatsApp to resign more than 18 months ago, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.
WhatsApp in recent months disbanded a team that had been established to find the best ways to integrate ads into the service, according to the report. The team’s work was then deleted from WhatsApp’s code, the people said.
In 2018 Facebook unveiled plans to generate more revenue from WhatsApp that included selling ads. Facebook formally unveiled prototypes last May for ads in its Status feature.
Those efforts are now suspended, the report said. The company plans at some point to introduce ads to Status, but for now the focus is on building out money-making features allowing businesses to communicate with customers and better manage those interactions, said one person familiar with the matter.
A WhatsApp spokesman declined to comment.
Facebook’s push to sell ads in WhatsApp was a big factor in the decisions by Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who created the messaging service, to resign from the company, sources told the paper. In 2016, the two changed WhatsApp’s terms of service to explicitly forbid displaying ads in the app, and complicating any future efforts to do so, according to people familiar with the matter.
