Comment by bitpush
I didnt dive super deep into it, but it looks like ads are going to be in status (the disappearing snapchatty things) and in Explore page.
I dont think ads are showing up when you chat in 1:1 or in group chats, which should be OK?
Apparently there is an entire team in WhatsApp that is there to maintain the ancient user interface. And I can see you're correct, chat will be similar. However, I think, one of the reasons for the demise of x/Twitter is that the clutter makes it hard to separate useful from junk. The appearance of ads in the status view will probably just make me less likely to go to the status section. I guess the more annoying issue is that it is possibly deviating from a chat app to another social media portal with ad delivery.