Facebook starts to monetize WhatsApp to benefit Businesses

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WhatsApp has become the go to App for chatting with friends and family for most people around the world. It has around 1.5 billion dollars users. Shown below is a graph of the growth of its users over the years:

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It is the estimation of this kind of expansion to a massive user base that had prompted Facebook to acquire WhatsApp for 19 billion US Dollars. It is exactly this user base that Facebook wants to present in a plate to the 3 million brands registered on its platform. Facebook had announced the plans to monetize WhatsApp in its F8 2018 conference.

Image Source : whatsappbrand.com

Businesses can now send information such as shipping details and boarding passes to users who have provided their phone numbers for such services. The businesses will have to pay to deliver such messages and this will ensure prevention of spamming. The messages will be end to end encrypted and people will able to block any business with the tap of a button.

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Interlinking with Facebook ads is also a feature that has been launched. This means that if users click on a WhatsApp linked ad on Facebook, they will be redirected to a pre-filled WhatsApp chat where they can message the business directly and quickly. Additionally, business will be able to monitor the effectiveness of their campaigns from a dashboard.

Facebook is testing AR ads in the News Feed

Facebook is testing the introduction of Augmented Reality (AR) ads in the News Feed. As of now, only a select few advertisers have been given the opportunity to take advantage of this futuristic feature. This feature was already used as part of a Michael Kors campaign which allowed users to  try on their sunglasses by using their phone's camera to virtually place the sunglasses on their faces, much like Facebook and Snapchat filters. Sephora, NYX Professional Makeup, Bobbi Brown, Potter Brown, Wayfair and King are the first companies testing this feature in their summer campaigns.

Watch this coverage by CBS Miami to get an idea of how it looks like:

The aggressive entrance into Augmented Reality by Apple with ARKit, Microsoft with HoloLens, Facebook with AR ads introduces a whole new sphere in digital marketing. Consumers have been steadily shifting to online marketplaces.The only thing that is considered a minus point of online marketplaces is the lack of means for consumers to truly experience the product before buying it. Augmented Reality takes care of this problem in the most ingenious of ways. This may indicate that in the next decade AR is going to become the norm in digital marketing and not the exception.

The next big sector to enter the Augmented Reality sphere could be the telecom giants. Imagine wearing glasses to have AR video calls with your loved ones enabling them to be virtually be in front of you just like the hologram calls in Star Wars but even better.

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