WhatsApp once promised to have No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!” on its platform. Last month, the news that ads were in fact coming to WhatsApp, which parent company Meta announced at Cannes Lions, prompted plenty of questions about user privacy and concerns about how user data could be used for ad targeting. (Meta has said that ads on WhatsApp will be targeted based on user details like location, language, followed Channels, and interactions with other ads.)
There are plenty more questions about ads on WhatsApp—but advertisers are already thinking about ways to leverage the new channel.
“The holistic ecosystem is evolving to connect different ways to interact with brands,” Grant Parker, president of ad-tech platform Innovid, told Marketing Brew. “This is just another addition to that that I think needs to be obviously threaded very carefully, in terms of the needle, between relevancy and offering value to consumers versus making sure that they feel really good about their personal communications remaining private.”
Between you and me: With limited targeting options available on the platform, Parker said that brands looking into the channel will likely put “a lot of emphasis on the creative message, because there’s going to be less understanding of who the person is.” He also recommended advertisers consider contextual factors, including time of day or whether target users are on the desktop or mobile versions of WhatsApp, to inform ad campaigns in the absence of more granular audience data.
As is often the case with newer channels, there may be some brand hesitation, especially given users’ privacy concerns, Parker told us. With that said, some early adopters are piloting ads on the platform while others wait to see how public perception continues to shake out, he said. Clients in the retail, tech, and telco space usually show interest in testing ad offerings like this.
According to two media buyers, CPMs for WhatsApp Status ads, which show up in the Updates tab on the platform, range from $0.10 to $0.15.
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“An irrelevant ad is actually worse than an unviewable one,” Parker said. “You’re going to have brands trying to connect with consumers in WhatsApp without a lot of understanding of who that person is…Brands are really going to have to get their creative right.”
Shatesha Scales, paid social supervisor at Rain the Growth Agency, said that while WhatsApp ads could potentially be useful for targeting users by location, Scales sees it as potentially being a more valuable channel for branding, building upper-funnel awareness for a brand, and generating leads and traffic.
She compared WhatsApp ads to sponsored messaging on Snapchat, saying the agency has been leveraging more conversational ad formats.
New horizons: While WhatsApp may have some ad targeting limitations, it does present a new opportunity. It’s embracing AI agents, which brands can use to directly engage with consumers, and Parker said that he expects AI agents to grow in use among consumers, presenting a potential opportunity for brands.
“As these AI agents start to become a source of heavy communication with consumers, there’s an opportunity for brands to create relevancy again, but it has to be a great value exchange for consumers to find that to be something that they’re willing to trade for.,” he said. “I think we’ll see this continue to evolve, where brands are looking for ways to be relevant in those spaces.”
Meta is leaning into WhatsApp AI agents, announcing a test of Business AI in WhatsApp earlier this month. The AI agents are designed to make personalized product recommendations and direct users to brands’ sites, all while communicating with consumers within a WhatsApp chat.
Next steps: Parker expects the platform’s ads operations to get more sophisticated over time. Likewise, he said, as the platform’s monetization grows, “there’s going to be, ultimately, demands from advertisers to measure and capitalize on it,” to get a better understanding of engagement.
“There will be evolution, as you’ve seen from all of Meta’s offerings over time,” he said.
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