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Bowing to EU demands, Meta rolls out ‘less personalised ads’ on Facebook and Instagram

EU regulators had found Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ advertising model not to be in compliance with the Digital Markets Act.

Meta launched its 'pay or consent' model in October 2023. (Image: Reuters)

Meta is giving into regulatory pressure in the European Union. Users in the region will soon be shown “less personalised ads” on Facebook and Instagram.

“This less personalised ads option relies on less data, so we’ll show ads based only on context – what a person sees in a particular session on Facebook and Instagram – and a minimal set of data points including a person’s age, location, gender, and how a person engages with ads,” the tech giant said in a blog post on Tuesday, November 12.

However, some of the less personalised ads will be unskippable for a few seconds, the company said.

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Meta also said it is dropping the prices of its ad-free subscription service on Facebook and Instagram. The rates have been reduced from 9.99 euros to 5.99 euros (for desktop users) and from 2.99 euros to 7.99 euros (for iOS and Android users).

“The changes we’re announcing today meet EU regulator demands and go beyond what’s required by EU law,” Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta, said in a Threads post.

Also Read | Meta faces regulatory heat in Australia for scraping user data to train AI models

In October last year, Meta rolled out a “pay or consent” model which gives EU users two options:

– Use ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram by paying a monthly subscription fee
– Use Facebook and Instagram for free but give consent to being shown personalised ads based on user data.

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The company introduced this pay or consent model to partially comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) which requires “gatekeepers” like Meta to seek users’ consent in sharing, processing, and cross-using their personal data across services.

“If a user refuses such consent, they should have access to a less personalised but equivalent alternative,” the competition law states. In June 2024, EU regulators held that Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ advertising model was not in compliance with the DMA.