WhatsApp is a very popular messaging app that allows users to communicate with people around the world. When I go on vacation in foreign countries, I can communicate with people back in the US with people that don’t have iPhones or iMessaging. This convenient app, owned by Facebook, is about to become another media platform to have advertisements that pop up while users are utilizing the app in 2020. The ads will reportedly take up the entire screen when a user clicks on the “Status” icon in the app.
According to an article I read, WhatsApp became the most popular worldwide messaging app after Facebook paid 19 billion dollars to purchase this company several years ago. Facebook also owns Instagram and its own Facebook Messenger. On Instagram, ads appear on Instagram stories. Similarly, when one views the ads in WhatsApp, they can swipe up the screen to know more.
It seems as if advertisements are popping up on every possible spot of our iPhones, from ads in between games, ads before watching YouTube videos, ads on websites (which can thankfully be blocked out using “Reader View Mode”) and ads on social media platforms. Just on this website alone that discusses the upcoming advertisements that will be a part of WhatsApp, there is an ad about PetSmart on the bottom of the screen, advertising their salon services for different pets. At the bottom of the article, there is another advertisement called “AdBlock Prime” which claims it will “block annoying ads on iOS.” Their description reads “Say goodbye to popups, banners, and in-app ads. No more annoying distractions.” This was actually very humorous to me, especially because they characterize the advertisements, including those right above it in the same article, as “annoying.” It’s interesting to me that companies are so adamant about adding ads into different commonly used apps, knowing that viewers don’t take the time to actually read the advertisements or take their product into consideration because they are “in the way.”
The same goes for ads in between games. If an ad pops up in between a game of Candy Crush, I will be become very irritated and simply stare at the timer to see when the ad will finish playing. In my opinion, advertisements on different media platforms are extremely ineffective and can actually hinder progress towards successful campaigning. If I constantly see Clorox commercials in between my games of candy crush, I will begin to develop a negative attitude towards the brand, and be less willing and much less likely to actually go out and buy the product. I think that advertising companies need to be smarter about how their customers will react to the advertisements they view and not bombard us with ads that become a nuisance.
That's definitely true in that it can hurt the brand selling things, since people will get annoyed, but there's no reason for the apps themselves to stop doing it as it makes them money. This is probably why ads like the energizer bunny or health bar ads emphasize how short they are, to push a positive association between it and the brand. The apps themselves get revenue from the ads, and in the case of Candy Crush it is likely their primary source of income since the game is free. For websites it certainly is annoying, but with apps, it isn't really fair to criticize it so much given that you're able to to play the app for free. The developers need to make money somehow. I can't speak for why exactly people would pay for these annoying ads, but they're not really that different from TV ads, and if an app or website needs to make money, they'll always be able to find someone willing to pay them for the exposure. Almost all ads are annoying, so my guess would be that companies mostly do it so people know about their product.
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