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WhatsApp da Meta launches new AI tools for companies
Meta has launched its first AI-based ad targeting program for businesses in Whatsappas it tries to extract revenue from the popular chat service, the company announced Thursday at a conference in Brazil.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new tools in a video shown during the event.
The announcement marks a shift for Whatsappan encrypted messaging service that heavily promotes its privacy credentials and has long avoided the types of targeted advertising tools that underpin other Meta apps, such as Facebook and Instagram.
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The social media giant has been introducing commerce and payment features into the app for several years, including “business messaging” tools that businesses can use to conduct customer service chats and send marketing materials to people who have shared their numbers. telephone with companies.
Previously, these tools were blunt instruments used to send messages to all users who had opted in to receive disclosure from the company. New AI tools will use behavior on Facebook and Instagram to target messages to customers who are most likely to be receptive to them, as long as customers use the same phone number activated on all accounts.
WhatsApp’s head of strategic markets, Guilherme Horn, told Reuters that these AI tools would give companies the ability to optimize the delivery of ads to users most likely to engage. “This is very important for companies because they are paying for these messages.”
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goal has stepped up efforts to make money from WhatsApp, its biggest app in terms of daily users. Despite the service’s popularity and impressive acquisition price of $22 billion in 2014, to date it has only contributed a small portion of Meta’s total revenue.
At the conference, Meta also introduced a new AI chatbot to answer business questions directly in chat, an early test of Zuckerberg’s goal of convincing companies to outsource their communications to automated tools.
The chatbot will help users with common requests like finding catalogs or checking business hours, similar to existing AI-based customer service platforms.
It also announced that it is adding Brazil’s PIX instant digital payment method, previously seen as a potential competitor, to its WhatsApp payment tool in the country.
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PIX, created by the Central Bank, represented around 39% of transactions made in Brazil last year and offers services similar to those of the WhatsApp payments tool, such as money transfers between individuals and purchases from companies.
WhatsApp similarly started offering payment services from rival suppliers in India last year.
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This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.
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