TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - WhatsApp has started displaying ads. In an update on Monday, June 16, 2025, Meta informed that the app now shows ads from various businesses through the Status feature that resembles Stories.
As quoted from The Verge, on Monday, June 16, 2025, the Status feature on WhatsApp, located in the Updates tab, allows users to share temporary text, photos, voice notes, and videos. This feature will now also display sponsored content from businesses alongside posts from friends and family.
Meta has long considered adding ads on WhatsApp, although the idea was previously strongly rejected by the app's founders. Although ad plans were canceled in 2020, WhatsApp Head Will Cathcart confirmed in 2023 that the development of this feature is still ongoing. Last year, Meta garnered ad revenue of over US$160 billion.
Ads will be personalized based on limited information such as location, language, followed channels, and user interactions with ads on the platform. If they choose to activate it, users can customize their ad preferences through the Meta Account Center.
Meta stated that it is committed to preserving user chat privacy. "We believe the Updates tab is the right place for these new features to work," wrote Meta, while emphasizing that they will not sell or share phone numbers with advertisers, and will not use message content, calls, or groups for ad targeting.
In addition to ads, Meta also introduced new features in WhatsApp, such as displaying promoted channels when users click the Explore button, and the option to subscribe to channels to receive exclusive content.
Development of Summarizing Long Chats
WhatsApp is also reportedly developing a new feature that allows users to automatically summarize long conversations with the help of Meta AI technology. This innovation is designed to help users deal with a stack of messages, especially in busy groups or business conversations.
According to reports from WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is currently testing the "Summarize with Meta AI" feature for individual and group chats on Android devices. The summary button appears at the top of unread messages, and users can tap it to get a summary of the conversation contents.
As reported by PCMag, this feature is opt-in, meaning users must voluntarily enable "Personal Processing." Meta explained this feature as an option that allows users to make secure and private requests using AI, without making message data accessible to anyone, including Meta and WhatsApp.
However, WABetaInfo noted that the AI summary feature will not be active if users enable the Advanced Chat Privacy feature, which also prevents chat history from being exported by anyone.
Meanwhile, Android Police added that when users use the AI summary, requests will be processed privately to ensure that messages remain safe and cannot be accessed by WhatsApp, Meta, or external parties.
Kakak Indra Purnama also contributed to this article
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