It’s official, ads are coming to WhatsApp. However, depending on how you use the popular messaging app, you may never see one. Hot on the heels of the welcome addition of a proper WhatsApp iPad App, WhatsApp has confirmed it’s introducing ads to the platform alongside a couple of other features for businesses and channels

The launch upends its founders’ original mission of creating an app with ‘No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!’ This week, WhatsApp did something its founders said it would never do: it’s putting advertisements inside the app. It ends WhatsApp’s decade-plus run of offering an ad-free messaging and calling experience.

I talked with a professor of advertising to make sense of what this means for all of us who use those social media platforms.