Social media site Facebook appears to be having plans for introducing advertisements within messaging service application WhatsApp, according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to the publication, the process of dropping the plan went as far as to be “deleted from WhatsApp’s code” however, Facebook have future plans to introduce ads into the status feature at a later time in 2020.
Since the messaging app’s acquisition in 2014, Facebook has been struggling to monetise the platform.
The introduction of ads would have been the first step towards monetisation since removing the 99 cent annual subscription fee in 2016.
As of now, the app’s commercial counterpart WhatsApp Business allows businesses and customers to connect with a charge of a small “per message” fee, which in turn facilitates direct conversations with customers. However, it is unclear how much revenue the charge generates.
