To catch up with the decline of online advertising, Meta plans to implement paid functions in Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. A trend that is hitting many social networks.
Meta could well follow the new trend of social networks, which consists in offering a paid subscription with new special functions, like Snapchat with Snapchat+ – which offers additional personalization tools –, Twitter with Twitter Blue – which notably allows to be able to delete a tweet –, Telegram with its Telegram Premium offer – which removes advertisements, increases storage capacity and offers cosmetic bonuses – or even Discord with its Nitro subscription. It’s a way to deal with a drop in revenue, and it was only a matter of time before Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger – followed this new policy.
Gone are the days when one could read “It’s free (and always will be)” on the Facebook homepage! According to an internal memo addressed to its employees and revealed by The Verge, the firm of Mark Zuckerberg has just created a new division called “New Monetization Experiences” – or “New Monetization Experiences” in French – entirely dedicated to the development of paid functions. It is led by Pratiti Raychoudhury, former head of research at Meta.
Meta: towards the implementation of paid options
Meta’s desire to make certain functions chargeable is nothing new. Since 2018, Facebook has already allowed its users to create groups whose membership is paid for, and WhatsApp has allowed companies to contact their customers directly for a fee. More recently, Instagram has allowed content creators – the famous influencers – to set up a paid subscription with their subscribers in order to offer them exclusive content and publications. Another idea, Facebook and Instagram are seeking to modify their interface in order to give more space and visibility to their dear creators – all while drawing very much inspiration from TikTok, which does not benefit users at all. Moreover, from 2024, the firm intends to start claiming part of the income of influencers.
But Meta does not intend to stop there. John Hegeman, head of Meta’s monetization division, told The Verge that there are still plenty of opportunities to fill the company’s coffers. According to him, there is “opportunities to create new kinds of products and features that people would be willing to pay for.” On the other hand, he did not give more details, contenting himself with adding that “We obviously pay attention to what’s happening in the industry. And I think there are several companies that have done some interesting things in this space that I hope we can learn from and emulate over time.” Hoping that this does not taint too much the free use of their social networks.
Dealing with declining advertising revenue
Decline in advertising revenue, competition, controversies in series… The reasons behind this decision are not lacking. It must be said that, financially, the company has reason to worry. Indeed, Meta announced at the end of July that it had generated revenue of $28.8 billion during the second quarter of 2022, a decrease of 1% compared to that of the previous year. A first in her history, she who only knew growth! It must be said that its economic model, based almost exclusively on advertising, has suffered a lot recently, between the war in Ukraine, inflation and the change in Apple’s advertising policy. The Apple firm has decided to better protect the privacy of its users with the iOS 14.5 update. Now, all iOS apps that want to collect user data must obtain their explicit consent – and of course, the vast majority refuse tracking.
The crisis that Meta is going through, however, needs to be qualified. Indeed, the global reach of ads on Facebook still increased by 1.2% between April and June, bringing the platform’s total global ad audience to 2.17 billion. Moreover, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp remain among the favorite platforms for people using social networks. Let’s hope that Meta does not move away from what made the identity of its platforms, at the risk of seeing the public turn away from it.