SAEDNEWS: Users don’t pay to use WhatsApp, a platform with nearly three billion users worldwide. So, how does WhatsApp generate revenue?
According to SaedNews, Nikhila Srinivasan, Meta's VP of Business Messaging, said: "If we do all these things right, our vision is to conduct business. Customers should be able to accomplish tasks within a chat topic; for example, if you want to book a ticket or make a payment, you should be able to do it without leaving your chat topic and then return to your other conversations."
Businesses can now choose to pay for a link that connects a new WhatsApp chat directly from an online ad on Facebook or Instagram to a personal account. Srinivasan believes this alone is now worth several billion dollars to the tech giant.
Matthew Hodgson, co-founder of Element, announced that the 10-year-old company with its multi-million-dollar revenue is now close to profitability.
He believes the most popular business model for messaging apps is the familiar digital model: advertising. Hodgson said, "Essentially, many messaging platforms determine advertisements by monitoring what people do and who they talk to, then target them with the best ads."
The idea is that even if encryption and anonymity are present, apps don’t need to see the actual content of the messages shared to gather a lot of information about their users. By acquiring this information, they can use their data to sell ads.
Hodgson concluded, "It's an old story; if you are the user and you don’t pay, there's a good chance you are the product."
