Ads are ‘finally’ coming to WhatsApp 📢

Plus: Amazon expands Prime Day to four days 🛍️, while Pinterest launches AI collages and forecasting tools 🤖.

June 18, 2025

WhatsApp started as the humble texting app we all relied on. But that era is fading fast—it’s evolving into a fully monetized platform right before our eyes.

Hey there, and welcome to another issue of The Ecom Press 🗞️!

This week, Meta makes a bold move by rolling out ads on WhatsApp across three key surfaces. Amazon’s extending Prime Day into a four-day sales marathon 🛍️. And Pinterest? It’s doubling down on AI with fresh ad tools and smarter trend prediction 📊.

Ready to take a plunge? Let’s dive in! 

In a rush? Here's the juice🤭:

📢 Ads are ‘finally’ coming to WhatsApp.

🛍️ Amazon expands Prime Day to four days.

🤖 Pinterest launches AI collages and forecasting tools.

🚀 Ecom Strategies: How to Drive Explosive Growth on Shopify

⚡️Worthy Mentions

Source: WhatsApp

After years of resisting ads, WhatsApp is finally entering the advertising game. Meta has confirmed that ads will soon begin appearing in WhatsApp’s Status section, the app’s version of Stories, marking a significant shift in the platform’s monetization strategy.

Here’s the scoop 🍨:

📲 Ads on Status: Users will start seeing ads after viewing a few Status updates. These will appear in the Updates tab, not in private chats or calls.

🔒 Privacy Model: Meta says the ads will be based on limited data like location, language, and ad interaction, not on private messages, calls, or group activity. For those connected via Meta’s Account Center, ad preferences may also influence targeting.

📢 Channels Monetization Begins:

  • Search Promotions: Businesses and creators can now promote their WhatsApp Channels in search results.

  • Paid Subscriptions: Channel owners can charge for exclusive updates. Meta won’t take a cut yet but plans to claim 10% in the future.

💬 WhatsApp Business and Click-to-Message: These channels remain active revenue streams. Meta says over 3 billion people use WhatsApp monthly, including 100M+ in the U.S.

🛠️ Meta frames the new ad formats as a way to help businesses be discovered inside WhatsApp without compromising personal messaging.

Why it matters 🤨

It’s been a long time coming, after purchasing the app for $19 billion in 2014, without monetizing it. But now, Meta is laying the foundation for WhatsApp to become a commercial platform, and while Whatsapp has become a lot more sophisticated over the years, this particular update opens a valuable, high-intent channel that has long been out of reach. Still, will Meta be able to balance monetization with the simplicity that made WhatsApp ubiquitous in the first place?

Source: Amazon

Prime Day 2025 just got a major upgrade. The annual summer sales event will now span four days—July 8 to 11—giving Prime members 96 hours to scoop up exclusive deals across top brands and product categories.

Here’s the lowdown ⬇️:

💰 Four Days, Millions of Deals: This marks Amazon’s longest Prime Day yet, following 2024’s record $14.2B in U.S. sales. Prime members can expect deep discounts across household essentials, tech, fashion, luxury items, and back-to-school supplies.

⚡ “Today’s Big Deals” Debut: New for 2025, Amazon is launching themed daily deal drops featuring brands like Samsung, Levi’s, and Kiehl’s. Each drop begins at midnight PT and is available while supplies last, with new deals launching as often as every five minutes.

⛹️ LeBron James Headlines Campaign: In a playful global campaign, LeBron imagines his post-basketball career—chef, singer, barber—tied to Prime Day deals. His grooming line, The Shop, is also featured in the promo lineup.

🚀 Young Adult Push: Amazon is targeting 18–24-year-olds with a refreshed Prime for Young Adults offer: 6 months free, then $7.49/month. Members earn 10% cash back on select categories during Prime Day.

⚒️ Shopping Tools: With AI-powered guides, Rufus, and Alexa+, Prime members get personalized recommendations, live deal tracking, and alerts when prices drop.

Why it matters 🤷‍♂️

Amazon’s move is beyond more hours. It’s about more control, more personalization, and more urgency. For ecommerce sellers, this means competition will spike across multiple categories for longer. With AI tools guiding choices, targeted campaigns featuring cultural icons like LeBron, and a sharper focus on young adults, Amazon is turning shopping into a deeply personalized ecosystem. If you’re a merchant, it only makes sense to optimize for the AI-recommended mix or risk being invisible.

🤖 Pinterest launches AI collages and forecasting tools.

Source: Pinterest

Pinterest is using its stage at Cannes Lions 2025, currently underway, to showcase a set of AI-powered tools designed to sharpen ad performance and help brands stay ahead of consumer demand. With Cannes bringing together the biggest voices in marketing and creativity, Pinterest is making the case that discovery platforms can play a leading role in both inspiration and purchase intent. 

The spotlight: auto-generated shoppable collages and predictive trend insights that promise faster creative production and smarter ad strategy.

Here are the deets ⬇️:

🧩 Auto-Collages: Advertisers can now instantly convert their entire product catalogs into thousands of shoppable collages, generated by AI. Drawing on the platform’s most popular content format among Gen Z, these collages are created based on outfit themes, user engagement, product similarity, and personalized saves. Early tests show users save these at twice the rate of standard Pins. Macy’s is one of the first brands testing the tool.

📊 Smarter Trend Forecasting: Pinterest’s updated Trends tool blends search activity with user saves, board curation, and shopping data. Advertisers can now see what categories users are planning to buy, discover top thematic trends under verticals like “beauty” or “home,” and tap into curated cultural moments via Editors’ Picks.

🎯 Performance Matters: With Pinterest claiming that Performance+ campaigns outperform traditional ones in 80% of A/B tests, these new tools offer both inspiration and execution in one place. eBay is already using the updated data to align campaigns with real-time buyer intent.

Why it matters 🤔

For brands, creative production and market prediction have traditionally been separate, slow-moving efforts. Pinterest is collapsing that gap by turning browsing behaviors into real-time creative assets and trend forecasts. Think about it: It’s more like a glimpse at how social platforms may soon serve as both a creative engine and a demand predictor, merging art and analysis at scale.

🛎️ The Ecom Press Insider

Source: ChatGPT Image Generator 

Ecom Fact: Synthetic ID fraud in North America surged 311% in Q1 2025, with ecommerce among the hardest hit. Using generative AI, fraudsters are creating fake documents that can bypass basic verification checks, enabling account takeovers and illicit transactions.(Source: Sumsub).

💡Fraud is scaling as fast as tech. If your ecommerce store handles identity verification or customer onboarding, it's time to rethink your defenses. Relying on legacy KYC systems or manual reviews might leave you exposed. This is your cue to start looking into smarter, AI-powered fraud prevention before it’s too late.

🚀 Ecom Strategies: How to Drive Explosive Growth on Shopify

Shopify success doesn’t happen by luck. It’s built through focused experimentation, consistent iteration, and smart scaling. If you’re looking to seriously accelerate your store’s growth, here’s a five-part strategy to help you do just that.

Let’s break it down: 👇

🧠 Nail Your Messaging With Angle Testing: Don’t rely on one message to carry your brand. Create and test multiple messaging angles, each tailored to a specific benefit, emotion, or audience pain point. Then run each in controlled campaigns to see what sticks. Cut the weak ones and double down on what converts.

🎨 Pair Winning Copy With Visual Variety: Once you’ve identified your strongest message, match it with a variety of creatives. Test static lifestyle images, bold product shots, and even unconventional visuals that contrast with your typical style. Let the algorithm and your audience show you what resonates.

📈 Scale With Structure, Not Just Spend: When it's time to scale, avoid dumping all your budget into one campaign. Instead, run multiple campaigns with different strategies, one focused on volume, another on cost efficiency, and a third on relevant interests. This diversifies performance and maintains consistency.

🖼️ Feed the Algorithm New Creative Inputs: Scaling shouldn’t mean recycling old ads. Regularly introduce fresh creatives with different looks and angles to keep performance from plateauing. This keeps your ad account learning and reduces creative fatigue over time.

📊 Optimize What Happens After the Click: Even great ads fail if your landing page isn’t pulling its weight. Make sure your product page, offer, and checkout flow are just as optimized. Test headlines, product copy, and visuals post-click to keep conversion rates healthy as traffic grows.

Explosive growth isn’t about flashy tactics but about structured testing, steady optimization, and making data-led decisions across the funnel. As you head into the busiest shopping seasons, focus less on guesswork and more on intentional execution.

Want to scale with clarity? Start documenting your ad angles, creative styles, and page variants. The faster you test, the faster you grow.

⚡️Worthy Mentions

Wrapping up…

Let’s be honest: Meta held off longer than most would’ve guessed before flipping the ad switch on WhatsApp. But with 3 billion users in its corner, the potential was just too massive to ignore 💬.

With Prime Day just weeks away (or should we say Prime Days 😏), how are you prepping for the buying season ahead?

Just remember—while traffic heats up, so does fraud. Now’s the time to double-check your store’s defenses 🛡️.

We’ll be keeping tabs on all the latest for you. But in the meantime, hit that subscribe button, and we’ll catch you next week with more of the good stuff 😉.