Zoom has announced that it is rolling out a "pilot advertising program", and will begin showing ads to free Basic tier users who don't pay a subscription fee. 

With Zoom now reaching millions of individual users, the way people use the conferencing software has completely changed over the past couple of years. Moving from almost entirely enterprise use, to lots of individuals using it for keeping in touch with family, colleagues and friends. 

To begin with, ads will only be rolled out on the browser page users see when they end their meeting. So there's no worries you'll be constantly looking at ads during a meeting. 

What's more, the only time you'll see these ads is if you're a Basic/free tier user in a meeting hosted by another Basic tier user. If the meeting is hosted by a paid subscriber, you'll not see ads. 

In addition, Zoom says it's rolling out this pilot ad program in "set countries", although it didn't announce in its blog post which countries those were specifically. 

The banner ad which appears at the top of this browser screen will also include a link that allows you to manage cookies. 

The company did stress, however, that it will continue to protect user privacy by ensuring that audio, video, files and messages shared during meeting will never be used for marketing or third party advertising purposes. 

For the most part, then, the service will continue the way it has been recently, with the only difference being you might now see an advertisement in the browser screen after your meeting is finished.