Zoom Advertising FAQ

Note (4/21/22): After piloting the advertising program for several months, Zoom has decided to discontinue the program in order to focus our resources on areas of our business that we believe will best drive our strategy and long-term growth.


Zoom's mission is to deliver happiness by bringing people together. As the pandemic took hold in 2020, we experienced exponential growth, and our user base expanded from primarily enterprise users to include a large volume of individual users. Today, millions of users around the world continue to access Zoom's products and services for free. And it is important to Zoom that we can continue to provide our products and services to users, drive innovation, and add even more value.

With this in mind, on November 1, 2021, we announced the rollout of a pilot advertising program that we expect will enable us to support investment and continue providing free Basic users with access to our robust platform.

For this initial program, ads will be rolled out only on the browser page users see once they end their meeting. Only free Basic users in certain countries will see these ads if they join meetings hosted by other free Basic users.

We have carefully and thoughtfully considered how to implement this advertising pilot program, and we have done so with the goal of ensuring user choice. Users will see a banner on Zoom’s website that provides a link that takes them to our cookie management tool.

We have updated our Privacy Statement to account for this advertising program. There is one thing we want to make very clear: as noted in our Privacy Statement, we will not use meeting, webinar, or messaging content (specifically, audio, video, files, and messages) for any marketing, promotions, or third-party advertising purposes.

We are incredibly proud to provide a service that helps so many people around the world stay connected. This change ensures that our free Basic users are able to continue connecting with friends, family, and colleagues with access to our robust platform.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Zoom decide to launch an advertising program?

Zoom's mission is to deliver happiness by bringing people together. As the pandemic took hold in 2020, we experienced exponential growth, and our user base expanded from primarily enterprise users to include a large volume of individual users. Today, millions of users around the world access Zoom's products and services for free. And it is important to Zoom that we can continue to provide our products and services to users without a paid subscription, drive innovation and add even more value. With this in mind, today we are excited to be rolling out a pilot advertising program that we expect will enable us to support investment and continue providing free Basic users with access to our robust platform.

Who will see ads?

Currently, only free Basic users in certain countries will see these ads if they join meetings hosted by other free Basic users.

In applicable regions...Free UserPaid User
Free HostAdNo ad
Paid HostNo adNo ad

Will ads be shown in all countries?

At launch, ads will be live in certain countries.

I was served an ad right after talking about it on Zoom. How do you explain this?

As noted in our Privacy Statement (which was updated to address advertising), we do not use meeting, webinar, or messaging content (specifically, audio, video, files, and messages) for any marketing, promotions, or third-party advertising purposes. Ads are served based on data that third-party advertisers on our platform possess.

Has Zoom, or will Zoom have to, update its policies to specifically address advertising?

Yes, Zoom updated its Privacy Statement on November 1, 2021.

Can users opt-out of receiving ads?

Yes, users can opt-out of targeting cookies through our cookie management tool which will disable the ads. Users will see a banner on Zoom’s website that provides a link that takes them to our cookie management tool, which can also be found at the bottom of our website under Cookie Settings.