Facebook’s WhatsApp messenger service will start charging businesses for sending marketing and customer service messages, it said on Wednesday, as the social network company’s flagship brand faces slowing usage and revenue growth.
The messages will be charged at a fixed rate for confirmed delivery, ranging from 0.5 cents to 9 cents per message depending on the country, WhatsApp said.
To read more about how Facebook plans to make money from WhatsApp, click here.
In other news:
Amazon is not just a huge emerging advertising player – it is also spending boatloads on its own ads. The company accounts for more than 10% of the spend of the top 50 programmatic advertisers alone, and spends 1.5 times more than the next biggest programmatic spender, according to a recent study by MediaRadar.
There's no sign of advertisers boycotting CBS, despite a mounting list of disturbing allegations against CEO Les Moonves. Advertisers don't seem inclined to react to this situation the same way they have reacted to reports of alleged sexual misconduct by on air talent, like former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly.
Reddit says it was hacked in June and attackers got private messages and other info of early users. The hack affected people who used Reddit between 2005, when the site was created, to 2007.
IHOP's burger sales quadrupled after its controversial IHOb name change. "Literally everybody in the world now knows that IHOP is now selling burgers," IHOP's president, Darren Rebelez, told Business Insider.
Papa John's has brought in a new agency of record - Endeavor Global Marketing - which counts Uber's former chief brand officer Bozoma Saint John in its ranks, Adweek reports. Ad agencies including Laundry Service, Fallon, Initiative and Olson Engage swiftly resigned their business with the company after news emerged that its founder John Schnatter had used a racial slur on a conference call.
Condé Nast reportedly lost more than $120 million last year, the New York Times reports. The media company plans to put three magazines, Brides, Golf Digest and W up for sale.