Meta rolls out WhatsApp ads and Channel subscriptions as part of a strategy to make money from the app.

After years of providing free services without any bells attached, WhatsApp is now going to start showing ads on the popular chat app. To be clear, users will only see ads on the Status screen — the app’s take on Instagram’s Stories.

WhatsApp is rolling out ads. In an update on Monday, Meta announced that it will now show ads from businesses through its Stories-like status feature.

As per Meta's Newsroom, advertisements will appear only in the "Updates" tab — a separate tab at the bottom of the app, which showcases both "Channels" and "Status" features. Users can subscribe to friends and other public channels, and post statuses of their own, akin to Instagram 's subscription and "Stories" features.

Elsewhere, Google has recently been ramping up its campaign against ad blockers, blocking some users from watching YouTube videos and preventing playback. In the most recent update, the company is reportedly slowing down videos for users with ad blockers installed on their devices.

Curtis said that when she first signed on as the spokesperson for Activia, “My agents and lawyers and many friends questioned why I would do such a thing.”

The new alpha feature, called Conversation Summary Add-ons, “dynamically integrates positive content from Reddit users directly below an advertiser’s creative, putting community conversations front-and-center in the user experience and blending AI-driven efficiency with real human perspectives,” according to a post from Reddit.

For now, the ads will only appear on WhatsApp's Updates tab, where users can update their status and access channels or groups targeting specific interests they may want to follow. In its announcement of the ads, parent company Meta claimed that placing ads under Updates means that the ads won’t “interrupt personal chats.”