The news: Meta announced numerous updates to its messaging ad options, with a heavy focus on WhatsApp, per a company blog.

• Meta is expanding Ads Manager to include WhatsApp campaigns, centralizing multi-campaign management across its platforms. The feature allows businesses to upload subscriber lists and use Advantage+ to optimize ad budgets or manually choose messages for additional placements. Advertisers can also develop WhatsApp Status ads within this workflow.
• The company is broadening access to Business AIs, a personalized AI agent for marketers, and exploring an AI that will offer customers product recommendations to facilitate sales. Brands can also follow up to answer more questions and give updates within WhatsApp chats.
• Meta is adding a direct calling feature for larger companies struggling to address customer needs, enabling brands to use the WhatsApp Business Platform to receive live calls from customers, call customers directly after a request has been made, send and receive voice messages, and make video calls. Meta indicated that this update could eventually lead to AI-enabled support.

Zooming out: The updates come shortly after WhatsApp introduced ads as part of Meta’s commitment to make messaging “the next pillar” of its operations.