Various
rumors already indicated in early 2019 that Facebook, which bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, would like to play advertising via the popular messenger. Initially, the plans envisaged that ads would be displayed between users‘ status messages, as was the case with Instagram, which bought Facebook for about $737 million as early as 2012. Later, ads would also be displayed in chat windows and in groups. As the
Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports, Facebook has now abandoned these plans for the time being.
According to the WSJ, one of the reasons for this is that Facebook has removed the code components from WhatsApp that were necessary for the advertising and that the team that developed the advertising integration has been dissolved.
Despite the surprising backtracking, WSJ analysts believe that...
