Meta Exploring Potential for Paid Facebook, Instagram Features

Twitter has already made presence, and Snapchat is slowly gaining momentum with its paid add-on feature. Thus, it makes sense for other social media platforms to explore this space. Meta reportedly now is creating a group to identify and build “possible paid features” for its apps – Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

According to a report Thursday (Sept. 1) by The Verge, it cited that an internal memo was sent last week to the employees at Meta.

As per The Verge:

“This will be first serious foray for Meta into building paid features across its main social apps, Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, all three of which boast billions of users. The decision has been after analyzing Meta ads business performance which was hurt severely by Apple’s ad tracking changes on iOS. Another reason to take a look at paid add-in purchases was due to a broader pullback in digital ad spending. The group, dubbed ‘New Monetization Experiences’ is going to be led by Pratiti Raychoudhury, who was previously Meta’s head of research”

Meta’s VP of monetization, John Hegeman, in conversation with The Verge said that the company is still on its vision to expand the ad business, and have no plans to let people pay to shut off ads in its apps.

He further said that “There are various opportunities to build new types of products, features, and experiences that would people pay for and be excited to pay for”, but he declined to further elaborate on paid features which are being considered.  

Meta confirmed that Apple’s tracking changes could cost it as much as $10 billion this year. It’s part of a reason why the company is reportedly looking into new ads that don’t specifically use advanced targeting, and this would require less user data.

These ads are known as Basic Ads which do not use anonymized personal information and are aimed at advertisers who are trying to promote their brand to a broader audience. These ads reportedly measure metrics like engagement and video views which could mean – effective ad results in less cost for exposure, with higher user interaction.