I talked with a professor of advertising to make sense of what this means for all of us who use those social media platforms.

WhatsApp says that users will start seeing ads in parts of the app, as owner Meta Platforms moves to cultivate a new revenue stream by tapping the billions of people that use the messaging service.

The introduction of advertising represents Meta's effort to monetize Whatsapp's massive user base of over two billion monthly active users. Industry analysts have long speculated that Meta would eventually bring advertising to Whatsapp given its scale and engagement rates. The timeline for these features was not specified in the announcement.