
Why we don't sell ads – WhatsApp Blog - msh
http://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads
======
Psion7
WhatsApp isn't about putting ads into the app but for better data collection.
That is why Facebook bought them. Facebook sells ads and targeting data and
one of the best ways to analyse a persons life to better target them for ads
is from their personal, non-public communication. You will talk about many
more things in private conversation with friends and family than you will
publicly on your Facebook profile.

A simple example is you are talking to a few friends on WhatsApp about booking
a holiday somewhere, you talk about locations, dates, prices, etc. all in
private, now Facebook can take all that data and using their massive Facebook
tracking system start advertising offers for hotels in the places you are
looking at going, shops you often mention that sell clothes for your holiday,
travel insurance, etc, etc.

You don't need to stick ads IN the app to monetise it. In fact keeping it
clean and ad free is the best thing to do as it keeps your users happy and
using your app more which in turn leads to more and more data collection.

I think the $1 a year thing is a load of crap that is used to distract people
away from the whole "if it is free you are the product" idea. If WhatsApp
looks like it is not _free_ because you have to pay $1 a year then
psychologically you "trust" it more because it is something you pay for rather
than something that is analysing every thing you ever say to build a better
advertising profile. Also has anyone actually ever paid that $1? I don't know
anyone who has, they always get some "promotion" that gives them another year
free for being a loyal WhatsApp user.

~~~
joeyspn
That could explain why I've been getting oddly accurate (highly targeted) ads
on FB related to the niche of a new app I'm developing. I haven't _liked_
similar stuff on FB and I was wondering how in the world FB knows that info (I
have talked about it extensively via whatsapp). So there are only 2 options:

1- They somewhat are able to read my browser history even when I have ABP with
"Fanboy's Social Blocking List" and a selective JS blocker installed.

2- They read my whatsapp messages.

~~~
wmt
How would they link your whatsapp account to your facebook account? Whatsapp
only knows my phone number and what phone numbers I contact, and my facebook
account doesn't know my whatsapp phone number.

~~~
joeyspn
Because Facebook knows my mobile number... I provided it long ago (IIRC for
setting up some ad campaigns or was required as anti-spam measure)

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manigandham
Messaging/chat are inherently bad apps for advertising anyway. This post was
also from 2012, before selling to Facebook for 19B.

~~~
yoz-y
I'd say that messaging is amazing for advertising. Consider this scenario: \-
you come to a restaurant \- you see a QR code on the menu, if you flash the
code and share it with your friends the restaurant will give you a discount

In this case the customer is motivated to use the coupon because they have a
discount and their friends are more likely to come because they trust the
poster.

First time I've seen this method was in China but I would not be surprised if
it were actually quite common (haven't seen in in Europe so far though)

~~~
JonFish85
See I feel like this is a slippery slope. Speaking 100% anecdotally, a text
message / direct message like that is expected to be personal communication;
if my friends start bombarding me with ads in my text messages, we're going to
have a serious talk.

Via email is fine, mostly because it's expected that I'll be spammed. But it'd
feel much more intrusive if my friends started texting me stupid codes to save
5% on their burrito.

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lewisl9029
I do actually find their monetization strategy laudable.

Selling your product to users is, in my view, a far more ethical monetization
strategy than selling your users to advertisers, and tends to result in far
less potential conflicts of interest.

That said, I also believe communication in general is too important to be left
to proprietary software, which is why I won't be using WhatsApp anytime soon.

~~~
netcan
If you want to have a messaging app, everyone needs to have it. If everyone
needs to have it it needs to be free.

Even if you could run this app by charging users just 50c, it would fail and
get beat by an app that was free.

~~~
IanCal
> If you want to have a messaging app, everyone needs to have it.

The people I want to talk to most need to have it.

> If everyone needs to have it it needs to be free.

Or at a cost they're willing to pay.

> Even if you could run this app by charging users just 50c, it would fail and
> get beat by an app that was free.

Assuming of course that the other app could sustain itself.

I don't understand your argument. SMS worked just fine for a long time and is
still used, yet it costs money either monthly or per message. Telephone calls
cost money. Sending letters costs money. I'd hardly count those as failures
when it comes to messaging mediums.

~~~
yoz-y
SMS had the advantage that everybody had SMS. This is not the case at all for
new messaging services.

People do not want to use another messaging service, there are already too
many. WhatsApp was one of the first and came in time where connectivity got
barely good enough to support the service, that gave them a huge advantage.

~~~
IanCal
> SMS had the advantage that everybody had SMS

Well not everyone (the first one was sent 7 years after the first mobile phone
call). And if you want to consider it to be everyone, then it's an example of
something where everyone has it yet it's not free.

> People do not want to use another messaging service

No, and therefore you need to offer something better to make up for the
annoyance of changing.

I understand your point, it's the clearest example of a network effect and
given two identical products the cheaper should be more attractive. However,
this doesn't mean it _has_ to have everyone and _has_ to be free. Those are
beneficial, but not absolute requirements.

Right now, I'd pay money for a decent messaging service with push & pull, with
a simple API that supports sending images. It doesn't even have to have many
users, I simply want this service at the moment and will pay money for it.

------
santiagobasulto
I'm wondering why did facebook buy WhatsApp? Oh, maybe to get better data from
us to sell... yeah, Ads.

~~~
chrisguitarguy
I suspect it's because WhatsApp's backend can be turned into a platform that
will run WhatsApp itself as well as Facebook Messenger.

There's a lot more opportunity to do messaging between businesses and
individuals (eg. customer service) as well -- see messenger for business.

Not saying Facebook isn't out to sell ads, just that there's probably a lot of
reasons that Facebook might want WhatsApp's technology and team. Especially as
they try to move more conversations onto their platform and reach out into
other markets.

~~~
alandarev
No company was acquired for its "backend".

~~~
otterley
Nonsense. Google's acquisition of Applied Semantics (which developed AdSense)
became a major revenue engine for the company. There are countless other
examples as well.

------
gcb0
> creates app that leeches your contact list and spam people to o install the
> app in your name

> post about hating advertising

you can cut the irony/hypocrisy with a knife. what's next? a post about how he
loves client interoperability? heh.

~~~
skrebbel
> _spam people to o install the app in your name_

Any references for this? I've been using Whatsapp for years and never saw them
do this. _I 've_ spammed people, in person mostly, to install it back when
Whatsapp wasn't ubiquitous where I lived yet, but that's it. I assume that's
not what you meant.

~~~
gcb0
it shows (or used to, or maybe it's an entirely different app. i only check
them out in a sandbox at time of launch) all your contacts as "offline" and
when you messaged them it sent out a sms or something else they would get hold
of from the contact list your just gladly provided them and it appeared as a
message from you asking them to install it.

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DevX101
That blog post became irrelevant the day Jan Koum signed the deal with
Zuckerberg.

Sure, WhatsApp isn't selling ads TODAY, but you better believe it's coming.
You don't shell out $19B for a 'defensive play'.

~~~
wmt
So wait, you know that Whatsapp has never have ads, but because it some day
theoretically could have ads, you're saying that the post is irrelevant? Damn.

Facebook have been bying all kinds on successful tech companies that don't
have any relevance to the Facebook social network ad service, like the Oculus
Rift. Not every company keeps selling one single thing forever you know?

------
iamben
I didn't realise this was 2012 until I started reading the comments. I wonder
how much this post has changed post acquisition. I suspect Facebook grabbed my
entire contact list from WhatsApp - the numbers in my phone were the only way
to connect me to some of the people they suggest. As much as I hate it, it was
a pretty crafty way to extend my social graph.

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vasco
What I don't understand is that effectively for me, and everyone I know,
Whatsapp is indeed free. Everyone started using it despite the "1st year free,
after that pay up" and every year since we get a message saying like "we
extended your membership for another year, please consider paying though". I'm
not sure if it's different in other countries but from where I stand there's
loads of people using whatsapp and not paying a cent for it.

------
hundunpao
>Have you considered the alternative?

Yes and they are better. i'm using Hangouts, Telegram and Line... why should I
use WhatsApp? These App all have more functionalities and are "free".

~~~
igvadaimon
It's not "alternative to whatsapp", it's "alternative app monetization
strategy".

~~~
sososoko
flew right past him. What would be a better monetization alternative though?

------
shubhamjain
One big problem WhatsApp suffers from is having a majority of userbase in
developing countries. India, where credit card penetration is still very low
and people still are not accustomed to the concept of "buying" software,
WhatsApp, simply keeps extending the free subscription period because most of
people would find it very hard to pay, even something as little as $0.99.

On the contrary, people here are ready to see obtrusive ads and avoid paying
anything, because "free" is better.

~~~
thomaskcr
I really don't get the hatred for ads -- it's really weird to me. I haven't
been bothered by an ad in probably the past 3 years, I can't remember the last
autoplaying ad I saw.

I like ads, they make the internet frictionless. I don't need to worry about
what I've paid for -- everything just works in return for giving up a little
bit of my screen.

I discovered Atlassian through ads and I really like their products, I assume
those were targeted -- so if anything I've benefited from tracking.

Maybe I'm a sheep, but I like easy - and I like that the people providing me
with articles, how-tos, etc get paid for doing that. I have yet to see a
viable alternative to ads for a low friction internet -- people using adblock
are, in my opinion, bringing us closer to the tiered internet than cable
mergers ever will.

------
lmz
(2012)

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higherpurpose
When is Android to iOS end-to-end encryption coming? Since they aren't relying
on ads, then they shouldn't need to rely on data-mining private conversations
either.

~~~
sososoko
how is it end to end when data is stored on their servers, i would assume its
stored without encryption right?

~~~
mschuster91
You can do end-to-end encryption just like with emails. Just the metadata
(sender, recipient) needs to be plaintext.

~~~
sososoko
Ahh, i think i get it. but that brings us back to my question; how is the data
store on the server, Encrypted or plaintext? if its encrypted would that mean
decryption happens per each session. e.g. when using whatsapp web ( could it
be why they need the phone to be online? )

~~~
motoboi
They seem to use a public key method.

How I would do it was by distributing keys to devices at login and let friends
use a users public key to encrypt messages to him.

Now you pack that encrypted message in a metadata envelope, send to server to
be later retrieved by the owner.

The keys should never leave the device.

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gcatalfamo
How can this make frontpage? Is this news or relevant anyhow?

~~~
fredoliveira
Particularly when you consider the fact that this article is from 2012.

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perseusprime
The article is 2012, not 2015. Let's see what they do when they hit 1B users.

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justinpaulson
This is quite a hypocritical post from a company that sold out to Facebook. I
guess money > values.

~~~
wmt
"If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we
wouldn’t have done it."

[https://blog.whatsapp.com/529/Setting-the-record-
straight](https://blog.whatsapp.com/529/Setting-the-record-straight)

~~~
justinpaulson
Being a subsidiary of a company that does exactly what they are advocating
against is an endorsement of their activity.

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omonra
They didn't sell ads for a very simple reason - they wanted to get as big as
possible, as soon as possible for the sole purpose of selling themselves to
FB/Google.

That was the plan from day 1 (imho).

