What you need to know in advertising today

Facebook’s
CEO Mark Zuckerberg listens to French President Emmanuel Macron
after a family picture with guests of the “Tech for Good Summit”
at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 23,
2018.
REUTERS/Charles
Platiau/Pool

Facebook’s WhatsApp messenger service will start charging
businesses for sending marketing and customer service messages,
it said on Wednesday, as the social network company’s flagship
brand faces slowing usage and revenue growth.

The messages will be charged at a fixed rate for confirmed
delivery, ranging from 0.5 cents to 9 cents per message depending
on the country, WhatsApp said.

To read more about how Facebook plans to make money from
WhatsApp,
click here.

In other news:

Amazon is not just a huge emerging advertising player —
it is also spending boatloads on its own ads. The
company accounts for more than 10% of the spend of the top 50
programmatic advertisers alone, and spends 1.5 times more than
the next biggest programmatic spender, according to a recent
study by MediaRadar.

There’s no sign of advertisers boycotting CBS, despite a
mounting list of disturbing allegations against CEO Les
Moonves. Advertisers don’t seem inclined to react to
this situation the same way they have reacted to reports of
alleged sexual misconduct by on air talent, like former Fox News
host Bill O’Reilly.

Reddit says it was hacked in June and attackers got
private messages and other info of early users. The
hack affected people who used Reddit between 2005, when the site
was created, to 2007.

IHOP’s burger sales quadrupled after its controversial
IHOb name change. “Literally everybody in the world
now knows that IHOP is now selling burgers,” IHOP’s president,
Darren Rebelez, told Business Insider.

Papa John’s has brought in a new agency of record —
Endeavor Global Marketing — which counts Uber’s former chief
brand officer Bozoma Saint John in its ranks, Adweek
reports. Ad agencies including Laundry Service,
Fallon, Initiative and Olson Engage swiftly resigned their
business with the company after news emerged that its
founder John Schnatter had used a racial slur on a conference
call.

Condé Nast reportedly lost more than $120 million last
year, the New York Times reports. The media company
plans to put three magazines, Brides, Golf Digest and W up for
sale.