Click to WhatsApp Ads: What Happens After the Click

It is an ad you buy in Meta's ad products — Facebook and Instagram placements — with a button that opens a WhatsApp conversation with your business number. Instead of a landing page and a form, you get a person in your inbox who has already typed the first message.

Meta owns the campaign side of this: objectives, placements, audiences and the names of the buttons in Ads Manager change on Meta's schedule, not ours. This guide deliberately does not walk through that screen — read it in Meta's own advertising documentation and treat any third-party screenshot walkthrough as dated the day it was published. What follows is the part that does not live in Ads Manager: what happens after the click, and what it costs.

One boundary matters before you spend anything. As of 3 September 2026, Meta documents the free entry point window only for clicks made from the WhatsApp Android or iOS app — its desktop and web apps are not supported. A click that arrives from a desktop browser still opens a conversation, but not a free window. If you are planning the economics of a campaign around free messaging, plan it around mobile placements. The Keaz feature overview shows which parts of the follow-up are automated once that conversation lands.

This is the mechanic that makes paid WhatsApp acquisition cheap, and the one most often described wrongly. Meta's pricing documentation sets it out in five steps:

1. The customer taps your ad and sends the first message from the WhatsApp Android or iOS app. A normal 24-hour customer service window opens, exactly as it would for any inbound message.
2. You reply inside those 24 hours, using any message type. That reply is free.
3. Your reply opens the free entry point window — timed from the moment you replied, not from the moment they messaged you.
4. For the next 72 hours, every message type you send that person is free. Templates included.
5. The two windows run independently. If the 24-hour service window closes while the free window is still open, you can still send — but only template messages.

Two consequences are worth putting on a wall. First, the clock you have to beat is the 24-hour reply deadline, and it is the only irreversible one in the sequence: miss it and there is no free window to open, for that person, ever. Second, the free window is generous but not a licence — it makes messaging free, it does not make messaging welcome.

There is a smaller benefit that tends to go unnoticed: utility templates delivered inside a free entry point window are not counted toward Meta's monthly volume tiers, so they neither cost you money nor push you into a different rate band. For the full rate and window picture, see our WhatsApp facts page, which tracks the current numbers.

No, and this is the single most expensive misreading in paid WhatsApp acquisition. Someone who taps an ad has started a conversation. They have not subscribed to anything.

Meta's own rules are the floor here: an opt-in is required before you message a user, the opt-in has to state your business name, and while Meta leaves the method up to you, it requires the method to comply with applicable law. So the ad click gets you a conversation you may answer. It does not get you a contact you may broadcast to next Tuesday.

The practical move follows from the timing. You have a 72-hour window in which messaging is free — so use part of it to ask for the opt-in explicitly, in plain language, and record the answer. That is the cheapest consent you will ever collect, because Meta is paying for the messages. Our guide to collecting WhatsApp opt-ins the GDPR-compliant way covers what makes the consent itself valid, and opt-in levels in Keaz explains which level a contact needs before a marketing flow is allowed to reach them at all.

Where teams get this wrong is subtle: they treat the free window as a sales window. It converts far better as a permission window. Ask, get the yes, and every later message is both lawful and expected.

Answering paid leads by hand works until the ad performs. Then it stops working at exactly the moment it matters, because the 24-hour reply deadline does not care that it is a weekend. The mechanism that removes the deadline risk is the Chat-in trigger: a flow that starts when a customer sends a message carrying a predefined text, which is what your ad's WhatsApp link puts in the box for them.

Setting it up takes five steps:

1. Create a flow under Flows.
2. Click the Starting point block.
3. Select the trigger event Chat-in.
4. Save.
5. Pick up the QR code and the URL from the flow detail view. The URL is what goes into the ad.

Each Chat-in flow generates its own URL and QR code, which is why the entry point tells you which campaign brought a contact in. One flow per campaign keeps that attribution readable — the Chat-in trigger documentation goes through the detail view. Because the incoming message is prefilled rather than free text, nothing has to be interpreted: the right flow starts on the first message rather than after a misunderstanding.

What the flow should say first is the subject of its own guide — see automated WhatsApp welcome messages. And if you want the same entry-point mechanic without paying for clicks, the organic equivalent is a click-to-chat link in your bio, your packaging or your email footer.

Cheaply, which is the point — and the arithmetic is worth doing before you set a budget, because it tells you where to worry.

Inside the free entry point window the messaging is free. Once it closes, you are back on Meta's per-message rates. As of 3 September 2026, a marketing template to a German number costs €0.1131; utility and authentication templates cost €0.0456. Austria and Switzerland are not billed as German traffic — both sit in Meta's Rest of Western Europe region, where the marketing rate is €0.0490.

Put those next to what a click costs. Whatever you are paying Meta per ad click, the messaging that follows is fractions of a cent by comparison. The expensive part of a Click to WhatsApp campaign is the click; the cheap part is everything you do with the person afterwards. That asymmetry is the whole strategic case for the channel, and it also tells you where optimisation effort belongs — in reply speed and opt-in rate, not in shaving message costs.

One dated change to plan around. On 1 October 2026 Meta begins charging per message for service messages — the non-template replies a person or an AI sends inside an open service window — with 1,000 free per business phone number per month, and also begins charging for utility messages sent in response to users inside that window. As of 3 September 2026, Meta's pricing documentation lists no change to free entry point windows on that date. That is a documented absence rather than a promise: Meta may update pricing on the first day of any quarter, with one month's notice for a rate change. Re-check the rate card before you build a forecast on it.

Every one of these costs real money, and all six are avoidable.

• Replying after 24 hours. The free window never opens. You have paid for the click and then chosen to pay for the messaging too.
• Treating the click as consent. An ad click is a conversation, not a subscription. Ask for the opt-in inside the window.
• Running every campaign through one flow. Each Chat-in flow has its own URL and QR code. Share one flow across campaigns and you throw away the attribution you paid for.
• Budgeting desktop placements around free messaging. As of 3 September 2026, only clicks from the WhatsApp Android and iOS apps open a free entry point window.
• Spending the 72 hours pitching. The window converts better as a permission window than as a sales window.
• Assuming the rates are permanent. Meta may change pricing on the first day of any quarter. Anything you model on today's rate card needs a review date.