At the moment WhatsApp is based on an annual subscription model which admittedly is a pretty low price, although given the number of active users, that translates to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. However like we said with the amount of users WhatsApp has, there is a lot of potential to be had.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Facebook recently revealed some of their plans to monetize the platform in the future, one of which could involve allowing businesses to advertise to WhatsApp users directly. Speaking at the JPMorgan technology conference, David Wehner, Facebook’s chief financial officer revealed that enabling B2C messaging was one of the ideas Facebook had.
“We think that enabling that B2C messaging has good business potential for us. As we learn those things, I think there’s going to be opportunities to bring some of those things to WhatsApp, but that’s more longer-term than the near-term.” If this sounds like something you’re not on board with, fret not as this is merely an idea and not something Facebook will be implementing anytime soon.
In fact last year Facebook revealed that they had no plans on monetizing WhatsApp just yet, although if this is any indication, it looks like Facebook is starting to cook up some ideas. Considering that they paid a whopping $19 billion for the platform, we’re pretty sure they would like to see a return soon.