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Guide · Marketing · For the owner whose promotions are not reaching people

Meta's second route for WhatsApp promotions: the Marketing Messages API, for the owner

Meta now has two doors for a WhatsApp promotion. The ordinary one carries everything a business sends. The second, called the Marketing Messages API, carries marketing templates only and comes with a promise: Meta will deliver more of the good ones, tell you how your templates compare with similar businesses, and measure what customers bought afterwards. Nothing about the number, the templates or the customer's screen changes. What changes is what the business agrees to share with Meta and how its provider has to route each send. Here is what Meta's pages say, so an owner can decide whether to sign the terms when the provider asks.

Published 3 October 2026 · Updated 7 October 2026

What the second door adds

Delivery that favours messages people read
On the ordinary route Meta applies each customer's marketing cap without regard to how good the message is. On the marketing route, Meta's page says, a message that customers tend to read and click is more likely to get through the cap. Meta's figure is up to 9% more deliveries for high-engagement messages, from a test it ran on roughly 12 million messages sent by advertisers in India in January 2025. The gain is for messages customers already like; a poor template gets nothing.
A mirror held up to your templates
Benchmarks compare each template's read and click rates with those of similar businesses in the region over the past 30 days, and Meta attaches suggestions when a template falls below the line. The ordinary route has no equivalent.
Proof of a sale
Conversion metrics: add to cart, checkout started, purchase and more, counted on the web or in an app after the message, as the conversion measurement guide explains. The ordinary route reports sends, deliveries, reads and clicks, and stops there.
A few formats and settings
Animated image headers, buttons that open a specific screen of an Android app, and a message validity the business can set anywhere from 12 hours to 30 days. Meta is also piloting automatic adjustments to images and text, which the business should know about before an edited version of its message goes out.

What does not change

Meta's onboarding page is explicit: no new phone number, no re-registration, no rebuilding of templates. The same number stays on the ordinary route for service replies, utility messages and codes, and uses the marketing route only for marketing templates. The cost figures Meta reports, and the basic counts, are the same on both. Pricing itself is unchanged by the route; the per-message marketing charge and the maximum price option are separate matters.

What the owner is agreeing to

  1. Someone with full control signs. Meta's page says the terms are accepted in WhatsApp Manager, on the Overview screen, from an Accept terms prompt in the Alerts section, by a person who has full control of the business portfolio. A provider cannot accept them on the business's behalf; it can only ask. Expect that request, and read what follows before saying yes.
  2. Delivery, read and click events go to Meta. Once onboarded, Meta's page says the status of each marketing message, delivered, read and clicked, is shared with Meta as event activity. Meta states it does not sell this data and uses it only to optimise campaigns. There is a switch to turn the sharing off in the account settings, and a connected system can override it message by message. Turning it off presumably costs the optimisation it feeds, which Meta's page does not spell out.
  3. Read-only ad accounts appear. Meta creates linked, read-only advertising accounts tied to the business's marketing templates so that insights can be read through its advertising tools. They are a reporting mechanism, not a licence for the provider to run ads; Meta notes providers do not receive access to them.
  4. Eligibility is checked. The account must be active and free of messaging restrictions, and the business and its tax country must be outside sanctioned regions. Meta says the industry and content rules it applies here can change.

What it asks of the provider

Meta's routing page, updated in September 2026, describes the one piece of engineering the second door demands. Every marketing template has to be sent through the marketing route, everything else through the ordinary one, and the decision has to be made from the template's current category, not the one it was created with. Meta can reclassify a template after approval, a utility reminder that reads as promotional becoming marketing for instance, and the system has to notice and change the route. Meta offers a setting that makes the ordinary route refuse marketing templates outright, so a misrouted send fails loudly instead of quietly losing the optimisation. For the owner this is a question to ask: does our system route by the latest category, and what happens when Meta changes one? The reclassification itself is described in the template categories guide.

Meta's sending page adds what happens in between. Until the business has met every onboarding requirement, a promotion sent to the marketing route goes out through the ordinary route instead, without the extras, unless the provider marks the message so that it may not fall back. The setting that makes the ordinary route refuse promotions only takes effect once onboarding is complete, and Meta warns that a business that has started onboarding but not yet accepted the terms may find its promotions blocked if the setting is on. It can be switched off again.

The same page family covers the tools built on this route: the conversion measurement guide, the per-person cap guide that the quality-based delivery works against, and the opt-in guide, because no route changes who may be messaged.

Questions

What happens to a WhatsApp promotion sent on Meta's marketing route before we finish onboarding?

Meta's sending page says it goes out through the ordinary route instead, without the marketing route's extras, unless the provider has marked the message not to fall back. Turning on the setting that blocks promotions on the ordinary route before the terms are accepted may block them altogether.

Is the Marketing Messages API a different product we have to buy?

No. Meta's pages describe it as a second sending route on the same number and the same templates, switched on by accepting its terms. There is no separate subscription on Meta's side; pricing per message is unchanged.

Will more of our promotions be delivered?

Meta's claim is up to 9% more deliveries, and only for messages customers already read and click, based on one test among advertisers in India in January 2025. A template customers ignore gains nothing, and the per-person cap still applies.

What data does Meta get that it did not have before?

Meta's onboarding page names the delivery, read and click status of each marketing message, shared as event activity to optimise campaigns, with a statement that it is not sold. The sharing can be switched off in the account settings or per message.

Our provider says they have 'onboarded' us. What should we check?

That someone with full control of your portfolio actually accepted the terms in WhatsApp Manager, that the event-sharing setting is where you want it, and that the system routes templates by their current category. Then look for the benchmarks on the template screens in WhatsApp Manager; if they are there, the route is live.

Sources

More plain-language notes like this one are on the guides page.

Deciding whether to sign Meta's marketing terms?

We set up a business's WhatsApp number on a proper system that routes every template by its current category, keeps the event-sharing choice where the owner set it, and puts Meta's benchmarks and conversion figures next to the campaign they belong to. A short call is the easiest way to see whether it fits your business.

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