Paid media strategy
holding you back?

Meta have announced they’re rolling out ad-free subscriptions to all users in the UK across Facebook and Instagram. 

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What’s this mean? It means that users in the UK can pay as little as £2.99 per month (£3.99 on iOS and Android) to not see ads across their feeds and stories in Facebook and Instagram. 

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Whilst this might be concerning for ecommerce brands that rely on those users seeing their ads, I actually think this is a good thing for advertisers. 

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Why is Meta doing this?

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But first, let’s look at why Meta is doing this in the first place. 

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Meta has been under scrutiny for a while now to give it’s users more control over how it uses personal information to create personalised ads. 

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Meta said: "It will give people in the UK a clear choice about whether their data is used for personalised advertising, while preserving the free access and value that the ads-supported internet creates for people, businesses and platforms,".

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It sees the platform-owner move towards the ‘consent or pay’ model whereby it’s users either consent to see personalised advertising or have to pay to use it’s platforms (ad-free). 

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What does this mean for advertisers? 

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I actually think this is a good thing. Here’s why: 

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Across Meta you have two audiences, those who click ads and those who don’t.

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Now, bear in mind that consumers have gotten used to getting Facebook or Instagram for free up until now, it’s likely going to be those users who never click ads that are going to be bothered enough to pay for the subscription. 

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On Meta, you pay for impressions, not clicks. So advertisers are having to pay for impressions to all those users who are never going to interact with your ads (bad). 

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With this new subscription, those users will be eliminated from the auction process, leaving a more qualified audience behind for us to target (good).  

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What do we think will happen? 

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Ultimately, we don’t think the uptake on this will be significant enough to make an impact on performance, nor are we going to be able to accurately prove the impact should there be any. 

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We might see an increase in CPMs due to more advertisers going after a smaller pool of users, but I find it unlikely due to the point above. 

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Either way, I look forward to seeing how this pans out!

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