Many digital news publishers have been urgently seeking solutions to their declining fortunes. Website traffic has plummeted, leading to a drop in advertising revenue, particularly as Google and Facebook have chosen to diminish the visibility of news on their platforms.
However, some publications are discovering new opportunities through WhatsApp, the world’s leading messaging app.
Late last year, WhatsApp launched Channels, a one-way broadcasting feature that enables publishers to share links and headlines directly with followers. Many outlets are leveraging this tool to attract readers and foster direct connections with an audience predominantly based outside the United States.
“It has become a huge source of traffic, actually, larger than X,” stated Marta Planells, senior director of digital news at Noticias Telemundo.
In just two weeks, Noticias Telemundo's WhatsApp channel gained over 30,000 followers and now boasts more than 820,000. The news outlet frequently produces original content for its channel, including short videos from reporters and polls on various topics.
“WhatsApp is a significant platform for Hispanics — it's the go-to for communicating with family and friends, especially outside the U.S.,” she noted. Meta, the app's parent company, reports that around 1.9 billion of its 2 billion users are located outside the U.S.
WhatsApp Channels are found in a distinct section of the app, separate from the messaging area. Individuals, businesses, or organizations can establish a channel to send videos, text, or links to their followers without needing to disclose personal information like phone numbers or email addresses. Followers can respond to posts with emojis but cannot leave text comments.
While WhatsApp traffic is still modest compared to what Google and Facebook drive to publications, many publishers are cautiously optimistic about Channels. Meta's history with news organizations has been complicated, as the company has previously launched and discontinued various initiatives aimed at supporting journalism.
Nonetheless, Channels represents one of the few upward-trending traffic sources, aligning with many publishers' efforts to cultivate direct relationships with their audiences and potentially guide them back to their websites or apps instead of relying on social media platforms.
Several media outlets have joined WhatsApp Channels and gained millions of followers, including CNN (14.5 million), The New York Times (14 million), BBC News (9.3 million), The New York Post (8.1 million), The Wall Street Journal (4.7 million), and The Washington Post (3.8 million).
In the past, Meta has courted publishers but shifted strategies frequently. In 2015, for instance, Facebook partnered with publishers to host entire articles on its platform for faster loading, a program that eventually ended. Since then, Meta has introduced various initiatives to support journalism, such as a News tab and substantial content deals for publishers, but these also faded away.
Recently, Meta executives indicated they were less interested in featuring hard news or political content. This year, the company announced the shutdown of the News tab to “better align our investments with products and services that people value most.”
Executives believe Channels provide a more focused and personal way to distribute articles and posts, resembling text message updates rather than blending news articles with other types of content in a traditional social media feed.
“It’s not like social media in the traditional sense because you, as a user, control what you want to see and can check it at your convenience,” explained Alice Newton-Rex, head of product at WhatsApp. “Alongside private messaging, users expressed a desire to hear more about topics, teams, and organizations via WhatsApp.”
Newton-Rex compared the product to email newsletters, emphasizing the design team's focus on creating a similar experience. Users often forward links and messages from Channels to their private chats, enabling further discovery of news articles and updates from other channels.
Meta has also suggested the possibility of introducing paid Channels in the future, which would allow individuals and organizations to monetize exclusive posts or content for their subscribers. This model is similar to platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans.
The Financial Times has opted for a multi-channel approach, launching three active channels focused on specific topics: financial markets (209,000 followers), the Israel-Hamas conflict (53,000 followers), and the U.S. election (22,000 followers). Rachel Banning-Lover, head of social media and development at The FT, shared that the markets channel quickly gained traction by posting one free article daily.
“It grew rapidly,” she said. “We aimed for 40,000 followers in three months and reached that in just a few weeks.”
In response to the Israel-Hamas conflict, The FT launched a channel that initially provided daily updates to counter misinformation circulating on various platforms.
Banning-Lover noted that the success of a WhatsApp Channel relies on whether users have opted in for push notifications. Users must choose to receive these notifications, and WhatsApp does not share data on how many followers have opted in.
The FT conducted a survey three months into its WhatsApp Channels experiment, finding that many users desired more push notifications from the channel.
“Our goal is to prevent people from disabling notifications,” she remarked.
The FT can identify its readers' geographic locations through tags on the shared web links, revealing that India, the U.K., and the U.S. represent their largest audiences, along with significant followings from the global south.
Swati Sharma, publisher and editor-in-chief of Vox.com, indicated that Vox aims to reach “non-news-obsessed” and international audiences through its WhatsApp Channel, which has 482,000 followers. The outlet primarily sees this channel as a means to increase brand awareness and promote new products, like podcasts and newsletters, rather than as a traffic driver.
“We intentionally craft longer posts,” she explained. “We believe this approach helps us stand out. If people engage with our content within the app, we consider that a success.”
Vox has also tested publishing more news articles on weekends and at various times to cater to international audiences and plans to use the channel to solicit questions for its new podcast, “Explain It to Me.”
Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of The Atlantic, views its WhatsApp Channel, which has 2.8 million followers, as an experimental space rather than a primary traffic source.
“While we occasionally see a WhatsApp post drive some readers, it doesn't compare to the scale of platforms like Facebook or Google — even in this new post-social-distribution era,” she noted.
Nonetheless, LaFrance emphasized the importance of connecting with audiences wherever they are.
“The social web is undergoing significant changes, which can be unsettling but also presents vast opportunities for journalists to engage with audiences in innovative ways,” she concluded.