Meta is introducing paid advertising on WhatsApp, as it tries to diversify revenue streams.

This marks a significant shift for the world’s largest messaging platform, whose founders vowed the app would remain ads-free when it was created in 2009.

 The shift aims to capitalize on WhatsApp’s vast user base of over 3 billion active monthly users, and provide new monetization opportunities.

Meta said ads won’t affect users’ personal messaging experience.  Advertisements will only appear in the app’s Updates tab, not where personal chats are located. End-to-end encryption will still apply to messages, statues, and calls and won’t be used to show ads.

However, information such as user’s location, device language, channel subscriptions and marketing engagement will be used to determine which ads to serve.

The move reflects broader trends in the tech industry where companies seek additional income sources beyond traditional models.