Meta announced that it has reduced the price of its ad-free subscription service by 40 percent in order to comply with the European Union’s data privacy regulations and targeted advertising policy. With this move, the social media giant aims to offer a more compatible solution to the EU’s demands on personal data use and targeted advertising, which have been causing problems with the EU for a long time. Accordingly, Meta’s ad-free membership price has been updated to €6 per month for web registrations and €8 for registrations via mobile applications. If users want to add an additional account to their existing account, they will pay an additional €4 per month on the web and €5 on mobile.
Meta will automatically apply this new pricing to its existing ad-free subscribers. With this change, Facebook and Instagram users in the EU will be informed again by Meta about their ad-free plan options and will be asked again whether they want to benefit from this membership.
Meta’s regulations for compliance with the European Union include new advertising options in addition to ad-free membership. Among the new options offered to users is the option to watch more limited and non-personalized ads instead of the targeted advertising model. Meta states that such ads will take into account limited information such as the user’s age, location and gender. However, since these non-personalized ads reduce user experience and interest, Meta will show some forced ads to users who prefer this model. These ads, which will be displayed in full screen, cannot be exited and users will have to watch these ads completely.
Meta states that this new advertising experience aims to reduce costs for itself. The company argues that similar applications exist on many other digital platforms and that sufficient value can still be offered to advertisers with this model. This step by Meta is seen as a solution to the EU’s pressure on social media companies, especially regarding targeted advertising. The company had previously stated that such a practice would harm its profitability.
Changes to Meta’s advertising policy are considered as part of efforts to comply with legal regulations such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which come into force in 2022. These laws require social media platforms to be more transparent and obtain consent from users when using user data. However, the “consensual or paid advertising-free model” that Meta offers to users in the EU region has brought controversy. European Union officials stated in July that this model may be contrary to the Digital Markets Law and investigated the issue.
Negotiations between Meta and the EU continue
It is stated that Meta wants to end the ongoing lawsuit by meeting the demands of the EU with these latest regulations. However, according to The Wall Street Journal, negotiations between the EU and Meta have not yielded any results yet. EU regulators are expected to complete this investigation by March and make their final decision. If Meta is determined not to be in compliance with the law, there is a possibility that the company could be fined up to 10 percent of its 2023 global revenue. This rate means a burden of approximately 13 billion dollars for Meta.