San Francisco. WhatsApp announced Monday that it will begin displaying advertisements in parts of its app, as parent company Meta Platforms seeks to tap into the messaging service's vast user base as a new source of revenue.

Ads will appear exclusively in the app’s Updates tab, which is used by up to 1.5 billion people daily. Crucially, they will not appear in areas where users exchange personal messages, according to WhatsApp.

“The personal messaging experience on WhatsApp isn’t changing,” the company said in a blog post. “Personal messages, calls, and statuses remain end-to-end encrypted and cannot be used to display ads.”

The move marks a major shift for WhatsApp, whose founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, pledged to keep the platform ad-free when they launched it in 2009. Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014; both founders later left the company.

Meta has long sought ways to monetize WhatsApp, and the introduction of ads is part of a broader push to turn the app into a revenue-generating product. WhatsApp said the ads will be targeted based on non-private information such as a user’s age, location, language, followed channels, and how they interact with in-app content.

The company said that it will not use private messages, calls, or group memberships to personalize ads.

This ad rollout is one of three monetization features WhatsApp unveiled on Monday. In addition to ads, channels can now offer paid monthly subscriptions for exclusive updates, and businesses will be able to pay to promote their channels to a wider audience.

Advertising is Meta’s primary revenue stream. In 2025, the Menlo Park, California-based company reported $164.5 billion in total revenue, of which $160.6 billion came from advertising.