Messaging service WhatsApp is set to introduce adverts on the platform next year.
Facebook has confirmed the messaging app will feature ads at its annual Marketing Summit in The Netherlands.
It would work similar to how ads appear on Instagram Stories, with a 'swipe up' function if users want to find out more about them.
The ads appear to take up the entire screen of a smartphone.
Conference attendee Olvier Ponteville shared photos of the presentation on Twitter - together with details about how ads will appear.
WhatsApp will bring Stories Ads in its status product in 2020. #FMS19 pic.twitter.com/OI3TWMmfKj
— Olivier Ponteville (@Olivier_Ptv) May 21, 2019
Facebook acquired WhatsApp back in January 2014 for approximately US$16bn (€14.2bn).
Earlier this month, it said it intended to develop a payments service in Dublin and London.
WhatsApp is set to expand its workforce by hiring around 100 people across both offices this year.
It is believed most of the software engineers will be hired in London, with additional operations staff to be hired in Dublin.
Matt Idema, WhatsApp's chief operating officer, said: "We're eager to work with some of the best technical and operational experts in both London and Dublin to take WhatsApp into its second decade".
"WhatsApp is a truly global service and these teams will help us provide WhatsApp payments and other great features for our users everywhere."
Some of WhatsApp's original employees, before the Facebook acquisition, have moved to Europe to lead these teams.
WhatsApp co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton have both left the company.
'No one wakes up excited to see advertising'
In 2012, two years before the Facebook takeover, Koum explained its stance towards advertising in a blog post.
He wrote: "When we sat down to start our own thing together three years ago we wanted to make something that wasn't just another ad clearinghouse.
"We wanted to spend our time building a service people wanted to use because it worked and saved them money and made their lives better in a small way.
"We knew that we could charge people directly if we could do all those things. We knew we could do what most people aim to do every day: avoid ads.
"No one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they'll see tomorrow."
"We want WhatsApp to be the product that keeps you awake... and that you reach for in the morning. No one jumps up from a nap and runs to see an advertisement.
"Advertising isn't just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought.
"At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it's all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out... And at the end of the day the result of it all is a slightly different advertising banner in your browser or on your mobile screen.
"Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product."
