Facebook has cancelled efforts to put ads in WhatsApp, more than a year after its founders resigned in protest of the effort
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Facebook is shelving plans to include advertisements in its WhatsApp messaging service, according to a new report.
The company recently disbanded a team that explored the best ways of integrating ads onto WhatsApp, the Wall Street Journal's Jeff Horowitz and Kirsten Grind reported on Thursday.
The move is a surprising about face in Facebook's efforts to monetize its various products, particularly one of its most popular services. Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $22 billion in 2014, and has since been searching for ways to monetize the company's 1.5 billion userbase.
Facebook had previously said that WhatsApp would begin placing ads in the Status section of the app, beginning in 2020. The advertisement giant even teased what the new WhatsApp ads would look like at a Facebook Marketing Summit.
But now, WhatsApp will focus on building features that let businesses communicate with customers in the app, as well as providing payments services to other countries, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider. Ads will remain a long-term opportunity but will not be subject to a specific timeline, the spokesperson said.
The tech giant's decision to shelve its WhatsApp ads plans comes more than 18 months after WhatsApp cofounders Brian Acton and Jan Koum left the company, along with a slew of other company executives. The two cofounders had been vocal about their opposition to advertisements long before Facebook had expressed an interest in buying the app, calling ads "the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought," in a 2012 blog post.
Facebook's push to bring ads to the app had caused its co-founders to clash with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. In a later interview with Forbes, Acton revealed that he had resigned from the company in protest of its efforts to sell ads on WhatsApp.
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Bani Sapra is a Business Insider editorial fellow covering tech. Her work has been published in or syndicated by the Associated Press, Washington Post, the Boston Globe, CNN International, and elsewhere. Got a tip? Contact this reporter via encrypted email at bsapra@protonmail.com or Telegram @bani_sapra. You can also Twitter DM @bani_sapra or contact by email at bsapra@businessinsider.com. PR pitches at bsapra@businessinsider.com only, please.
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