The introduction of advertising on WhatsApp is not as imminent as we had anticipated, at least not in Europe. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which is the authority responsible for overseeing compliance with the GDPR in the European Union, has announced that WhatsApp’s advertising model will not be implemented within the EU before 2026.
Without a doubt, Meta’s plans to bring advertising to WhatsApp have become the news of the week, sparking considerable debate and also raising questions about how user privacy would be impacted.
The technology firm clarified that the new features (status ads, promoted channels, and channel subscriptions) will be integrated exclusively within the “Updates” tab, without interfering with the user experience in chats. Furthermore, messages will continue to be end-to-end encrypted, and Meta will not use messages, calls, or statuses to personalize advertisements, thereby ensuring that privacy is maintained.
This leads to the question: how does WhatsApp intend to target advertisements? The company has stated that it will utilize basic account information (country and, if provided, the user’s age), the device language, and general location (city or country) for advertisement segmentation.
In addition, if a user has linked their WhatsApp profile to the Meta Accounts Center, the company may rely on their preferences and advertising information from platforms such as Instagram or Facebook. This option can be deactivated should the user so desire.
However, as has previously occurred with other features or products launched by Meta or other leading technology companies such as OpenAI, before entering the European Union, WhatsApp’s advertising model must be reviewed by data privacy regulatory authorities.
According to Politico, the Data Protection Commissioner Des Hogan stated, “This new product will not launch in the EU market before 2026. We have been notified by WhatsApp and we will meet with them to address any matters in greater detail… so that we may reflect on any concerns we, as European regulators, might have.”
For his part, Commissioner Dale Sunderland explained, “We are still in the early stages, and we will become involved as we do with every new feature and any new issue brought to us… and at this point, it is much too early to determine which issues, if any, would constitute a red line.”
Photo: GPT-4o
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