Meta has announced plans to introduce a paid subscription for Instagram and Facebook in the UK, following a landmark privacy case earlier this year.
In the coming weeks, UK users aged 18 and over will receive a notification asking them if they want to subscribe to Instagram and Facebook for £3.99 per month on iOS and Android, and £2.99 per month on web browsers. Users will be able to dismiss the notifications in the short term, “allowing existing users time to consider their options before a decision is required”, Meta said in a note. The company has not specified how long users will be given before they must decide whether they’d like to opt into the paid-for version, and whether this choice can be changed later down the line.
For those using Instagram — a vital acquisition channel for fashion and beauty brands — in the UK, there is now a choice: users can either consent to the platform using their personalised data for targeted ads and continue for free, or they can pay to avoid all personalised ads.
This doesn’t mean that UK consumers can avoid their data being used by Instagram and Facebook altogether — parent company Meta will still collect, store and use personal data for what it calls “personalised organic experiences”, in line with its broader privacy policy. That translates to all non-paid-for features of the platforms, including the algorithm that personalises users’ feeds, recommended posts, reels and friends.
Meta says the move is a response to recent regulatory guidance from the UK’s ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office), to give British citizens a clear choice to opt in or out of their data being harvested for paid-for, targeted ads, while preserving free access to the current ad-supported version of its platforms.
Meta’s use of data for personalised ads came to the fore earlier this year when a British woman won a lawsuit against Meta for its use of her personalised data to target her with ads during her pregnancy on Facebook. The ICO has since been engaging with Meta on the matter.
Meta has been locked into ongoing negotiations with both UK and European regulators this year over this data usage that sits at the heart of its business model — unlike regulators in the US, who have taken a more liberal approach to the handling of data by tech companies, European and UK regulators have taken a privacy-first approach. Things have recently come to a head, after regulatory battles over the personal data that fuels social media platforms’ algorithms — and business models — have raged in the US, the EU and the UK for the last few years.
When announcing the changes, Meta commented on the differing approaches between regulators in the EU and the UK on the matter, saying it “welcomed” the ICO’s “more pro-growth and pro-innovation regulatory environment”, which allows users a clear choice while continuing the personalised ad tools that the tech company called “engines of growth and productivity” for companies operating in the UK. Meta criticised EU regulators’ approach, claiming that they “continue to overreach by requiring us to provide a less personalised ad experience that goes beyond what the law requires, creating a worse experience for users and businesses”.
What does it mean for brands?
The news is the latest in a string of regulatory developments in the UK, the EU and the US that have amplified regulatory fragmentation across the different markets in which many global fashion brands operate. Experts say the impact on brands’ marketing strategies goes far and wide — it could even be “equatable to the Netflix-ification of the TV advertising space”, says Paul Archer, founder and CEO of brand advocacy consultancy Duel.
He flags that the introduction of a paid subscription on Instagram could affect luxury brands the most, as their target customer — a buyer who is willing and able to pay for this newfound choice — becomes harder to reach. “This move from Meta will undoubtedly make the more affluent users, with higher spending potential and more desirable lifetime value, harder to target and attract through traditional social marketing approaches,” Archer says. “For brands, losing the ability to target this highly coveted demographic through ads isn’t just inconvenient; it chips away at the foundation of paid social strategies.”
Following the recent changes to TikTok in the US, experts believe that for marketing teams, agility is key. Marketing experts say brands and creators have already been experimenting more with Instagram reels this year, as TikTok’s fate in the US hung in the balance. Now that the US has given the green light for a deal that would allow the brand to continue, brands could begin to move their marketing spend back to TikTok, whose new US owners are likely to take a more hands-off approach to data usage than their European peers.
“Meta’s ad-free subscription is another signpost of the shifting social contract between platforms, brands and communities. It means we are shifting from attention as currency to choice as currency,” says Leanne Elliott Young, co-founder and CEO of the Institute of Digital Fashion. “It also reflects wider content fatigue and the overwhelming nature of social spaces.”
Where Meta’s advertising model has historically benefitted larger brands — with the means for large paid-ad spends — smaller players say they’ve increasingly struggled to gain authentic reach through organic content. Some even say the new paid-for option could actually be good news for independent brands, and help to level the playing field between established and emerging businesses.
“If more users choose to opt for an ad-free experience, brand storytelling and genuine cultural and influencer collaborations will carry heavier weight,” says Namrata Kamdar, founder of sustainable beauty brand Plenaire. “It signals clearly that creativity and community could again determine what people choose to engage with, rather than a user experience determined by a revenue-fuelled algorithm.”
For smaller brands, this puts more pressure on marketing teams to get their creative right the first time. “Large brands can absorb rising cost per mille [or CPMs, a pricing model based on ad impressions] and weaker targeting, while small brands feel the performance dip sooner,” says Anna Wallander, founder of sustainable fine jewellery brand Akind. “Our hedge will be: buy reach sparingly, make it unforgettable and convert on channels we own.”
Meanwhile, luxury brands with the resources to experiment could invest more in alternative strategies to potentially fill the void, as users migrate from ads they deem intrusive and lean into content from friends and creators they know and trust, who reflect their values.
“As more people choose ad-free experiences, the pool of trackable impressions shrinks — and for the user, it gets noisier. This means brands will fight harder to win over fewer people,” Wallander says. “Independent validation beyond social — editorial coverage and creators with a genuine reason to advocate — will matter more, sending qualified traffic to owned channels and strengthening search visibility, which lifts performance across platforms,” she adds.
This could be a boon for the already-booming affiliate marketing industry, as consumers increasingly look to creators’ direct recommendations. In the last couple of months, companies have been racing to launch direct-to-consumer (DTC) platforms that offer creators the ability to set up their own storefronts. Vogue announced the upcoming launch of its creator shopping platform Vette, and ShopMy released Circles, a DTC storefront platform for creators.
“It’s another reminder that people buy from people,” Archer says. “Brands will be forced to lean harder into building communities of loyal fans, nurturing advocates and encouraging organic conversations that scale, like ads once did. In many ways, this is a creative challenge, but also a golden opportunity to build strategies that are stickier, more authentic and less interruptive.”
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