Musk Says Apple Mostly Stopped Advertising on Twitter

The Apple Inc logo is seen at the entrance to the Apple store in Brussels, Belgium November 28, 2022. (Reuters)
The Apple Inc logo is seen at the entrance to the Apple store in Brussels, Belgium November 28, 2022. (Reuters)
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Musk Says Apple Mostly Stopped Advertising on Twitter

The Apple Inc logo is seen at the entrance to the Apple store in Brussels, Belgium November 28, 2022. (Reuters)
The Apple Inc logo is seen at the entrance to the Apple store in Brussels, Belgium November 28, 2022. (Reuters)

Billionaire Elon Musk said in a tweet on Monday that Apple Inc has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. 

Apple and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Earlier in November, Musk said Twitter had seen a "massive" drop in revenue and blamed activist groups for pressuring advertisers. 

Several companies including General Mills Inc and luxury automaker Audi of America have paused advertising on Twitter since Musk completed his purchase, while General Motors Co said it had temporarily halted paid advertising on the social media platform. 

Apple spent an estimated $131,600 on Twitter ads between Nov. 10 and Nov. 16, down from $220,800 between Oct. 16 and Oct. 22, the week before Musk closed the Twitter acquisition, according to ad measurement firm Pathmatics.  



WhatsApp to Start Showing Ads to Users in Some Parts of the Messaging App

A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
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WhatsApp to Start Showing Ads to Users in Some Parts of the Messaging App

A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)

WhatsApp said Monday that users will start seeing ads in some 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.

Advertisements will be shown only in the app's Updates tab, which is used by as many as 1.5 billion people each day. However, they won't appear where personal chats are located, developers said.

"The personal messaging experience on WhatsApp isn’t changing, and personal messages, calls and statuses are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be used to show ads," WhatsApp said in a blog post.

It’s a big change for the company, whose founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton vowed to keep the platform free of ads when they created it in 2009.

Facebook purchased WhatsApp in 2014 and the pair left a few years later. Parent company Meta has long been trying to generate revenue from WhatsApp.

WhatsApp said ads will be targeted to users based on information like the user's age, the country or city where they're located, the language they're using, the channels they're following in the app, and how they're interacting with the ads they see.

WhatsApp said it won't use personal messages, calls and groups that a user is a member of to target ads to the user.

It's one of three advertising features that WhatsApp unveiled on Monday as it tries to monetize the app's user base. Channels will also be able to charge users a monthly fee for subscriptions so they can get exclusive updates. And business owners will be able to pay to promote their channel's visibility to new users.