The launch upends its founders’ original mission of creating an app with ‘No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!’ This week, WhatsApp did something its founders said it would never do: it’s putting advertisements inside the app. It ends WhatsApp’s decade-plus run of offering an ad-free messaging and calling experience.

The ads will be shown to users only within WhatsApp’s “Updates” tab to separate them from people’s personal conversations.

Meta has confirmed it will introduce ads to WhatsApp, ending a long-standing “no ads” policy and marking a major shift for the world’s most-used messaging app. The advertising rollout will begin globally over the next few months.