It was one of the prime reason why original WhatsApp founders Brian Acton, Jan Koum resigned from their jobs after their App was acquired by Facebook.
Brian always wanted WhatsApp to be advertisement free messaging App. Mark Zuckerberg kept on emphasizing on the need of monetizing WhatsApp with ads because of large number of users, resulting in Acton leaving the company and later on saying:
Targeted advertising is what makes me unhappy
WhatsApp will be showing you Ads soon. Mark Zuckerberg revealed that in his post on Facebook.
With over 250 million users in India alone, 1.5 billion global users, the company is allowing businesses to send targeted ads in ‘Status‘ of WhatsApp users.
It is also reported that advertisements will be powered by Facebook’s native advertising system.
WhatsApp has around 1.5 billion users as compered to Facebook’s 2.3 billion users.