The head of WhatsApp has dismissed a report that the world’s most popular messaging service could introduce adverts as “false”.<br /><br />The Financial Times has reported that teams at WhatsApp’s parent company Meta have been discussing the prospect of displaying adverts in lists of conversations with contacts.<br /><br />The report said The Financial Times had spoken to three people familiar with the matter and that while no final decisions had been made, the concept had been “debated at a high level within the company”.<br /><br />It said that the potential feature would see adverts appear next to chats with friends and relations rather than within the conversations themselves. A source “with close knowledge of the internal discussions” said the adverts would be appear in a similar way to those shown on Gmail email accounts and on Facebook Messenger.<br /><br />But Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp at Meta, responded to the story on X, formerly known as Twitter.<br /><br />He said: “This @FT story is false. We aren't doing this.”<br /><br />A statement provided to the Financial Times by Meta added: “We can’t account for every conversation someone had in our company but we are not testing this, working on it and it is not our plan at all.”
