Meta Launches First AI Ad Ad Targeting Program On WhatsApp

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced new tools for Whatsapp (photo: ig @zuck)

JAKARTA - Meta launched its first AI-based advertising targeting program for businesses on WhatsApp, in an effort to generate revenue from the popular chat service. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new tools in a video exhibited on Thursday 6 June at a conference in Brazil.

This announcement marks a change for WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging service that prioritizes its privacy credentials and has long avoided advertising targeting tools like those used in other Meta apps, such as Facebook and Instagram.

The social media giant has introduced trade and payment features to the app over the past few years, including a "business messaging" tool that companies can use to chat customer services and send marketing materials to people who have shared their phone numbers with the company.

Previously, these tools were used in general to send mass messages to all users who had chosen to receive information from the company. This new AI tool will use behavior on Facebook and Instagram to target messages to customers who most likely receive the message, provided customers use the same phone numbers in their accounts.

WhatsApp's head of strategic market, Guilherme Horn, told Reuters that this AI tool will provide a business with the ability to optimize ad shipments to users most likely to engage. "This is very important for businesses as they pay for these messages," he said.

Meta has stepped up efforts to make money from WhatsApp, their biggest app in terms of daily users. Despite the popularity of this service and the astonishing acquisition price of 22 billion US dollars (Rp357.2 trillion) in 2014, to date WhatsApp has contributed only a small part of Meta's total revenue.

At the conference, Meta also introduced a new AI chatbot to answer direct business questions in chat, an initial trial of Zuckerberg's goal of convincing businesses to power their communications to automated tools.

This chatbot will help users with general demand such as finding catalogs or consulting on working hours, similar to existing AI-backed customer service platforms.

Meta also announced the addition of Brazil's instant digital payment method, PIX, which was previously considered a potential competitor, to the country's WhatsApp payment instrument.

PIX, designed by the central bank, represents about 39% of transactions carried out in Brazil last year, and offers similar services to WhatsApp payment tools, such as inter-individual money transfers and company purchases. WhatsApp also started offering payment services from competing providers in India last year.