WhatsApp is rolling out a range of new updates and product enhancements, including its latest artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, to expand its business offering and position the Meta-owned messaging app as a go-to platform for businesses worldwide to run and scale their operations more efficiently.
Meta is also making it easier for businesses to manage their marketing strategies across its suite of apps, including WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, through its Ads Manager tool.
This move comes on the heels of Meta announcing that it will introduce ads to WhatsApp in the coming months, through the Updates tab, as the social networking giant seeks to accelerate its push to monetise its most expensive acquisition.
At Conversations, Meta’s annual business messaging event held on July 1, the company announced that it is making it easier for businesses of all sizes to use the same creatives, setup flows, and budgets in a single central place.
Once onboarded, businesses can upload their opted-in subscriber lists and either manually select WhatsApp marketing messages as an additional placement or use Advantage+, the company's suite of AI-powered tools designed to enhance and optimise ad campaign performance. When available, businesses interested in creating ads in Status will be able to do so from Ads Manager as well.
Nikila Srinivasan, vice president of business messaging at Meta, told Moneycontrol that prior to Status ads, there was no way for people to discover new businesses directly on WhatsApp, which now has over 3 billion users worldwide.
This feature, she said, will simplify things for businesses and bring marketing messages to them on a surface they’re already familiar with — Ads Manager.
Broader voice calling rollout for large businesses
In the coming weeks, large businesses using the WhatsApp Business Platform will be able to receive a call from a customer when they want to speak to someone live, or place a call themselves once the customer has asked to hear from them.
Meta first announced this feature in June last year, and it’s now rolling out after being piloted with a handful of businesses.
In the next few months, Meta said it will also add the ability to send and receive voice messages for additional support or make a video call, which can be useful in scenarios like telehealth appointments.
"I see this as complementary to (traditional Interactive Voice Responses (IVRs)). Businesses can bring that experience and make it available through WhatsApp as another channel where they can have conversations with customers," Srinivasan said.
A fortnight ago, Meta announced at the Cannes Lions 2025 festival that it is exploring the addition of voice capabilities to its AI agents. As part of this, customers who see a feed ad from a select group of businesses on Facebook will be able to tap the “Tap to talk” button to speak directly with the Business AI in the in-app browser.
"We see voice as a modality that needs to be accessible and available across the board for all businesses. As we roll out WhatsApp calling, we're probably going to see businesses start to use it in interesting ways, including integrating with any audio AI integrations that they already have," she said.
Business AI expansion
Meta is also exploring a business AI agent that can be integrated into businesses' websites, allowing people to ask questions, get personalised recommendations, and receive follow-ups in WhatsApp chats with answers or updates. Srinivasan said the company will initially test this feature with select businesses in the United States.
Additionally, the company is expanding Business AIs, which are essentially AI agents that small businesses can activate to act on their behalf, to Mexico.
"We're building business AIs that will massively scale what small businesses are able to do in terms of sales and customer support...In the next few years, I expect that just like every business today has an email address, social media account, and website, they're also going to have an AI business agent" Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the event.
Zuckerberg said that businesses will be able to leverage all of the content that already exists on their Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp profiles to easily create these agents, making them a "true extension of your team".
These AI agents can respond in the business's tone and style while answering questions and providing the necessary support to their customers.
AI turbocharging business messaging
Srinivasan told Moneycontrol that she expects AI to be a turbocharger for the business messaging vertical, as it will help businesses scale the volume of customer interactions and maintain a 24x7 presence and support.
"As CTWA (Click-to-WhatsApp) ads become a core part of the business messaging vertical, setting up an AI will help businesses scale their business faster and address the demand that they're going to get from a highly performing CTWA ad faster" she said.
Click-to-WhatsApp ads enable businesses to place a call-to-action button across Facebook and Instagram that, when clicked, opens a conversation thread with the business on WhatsApp. Meta also offers an API platform, aimed at medium-to-large businesses and enterprises, which allows them to send various types of paid messages to customers.
Business messaging has become strategically important for Meta in recent years, as it looks to diversify its revenue sources beyond traditional digital advertising. In April, Zuckerberg said during the company's earnings call that he expects business messaging to become the "next pillar of our business."
India, which is one of the largest markets for paid messaging globally, has been central to this growth in recent years.
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