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Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

arstechnica.com

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Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#11

Post by Mistletoe »

HBO Max is $16 and is an entire world of ad-free quality movies HBO has to purchase. I have my doubts many will pay $14 for ad free Facebook and Instagram. $14 to not bother you with ads reminds me of protection rackets from organized crime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket

> The perpetrators of a protection racket may protect vulnerable targets from other dangerous individuals and groups or may simply offer to refrain from themselves carrying out attacks on the targets, and usually both of these forms of protection are implied in the racket.

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#13

Post by i_am_jl »

hiatus wrote: post #6

Seems to be the same reported at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37750510

I've never been clear on how HN unifies these posts; does it matter at all that WSJ is paywalled but this article links to a publicly available article?

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#14

Post by dewey »

xyst wrote: post #10

Why pay $14/month for what I can do for free? Also doesn’t say if FB will continue to sell your data or not if you pay the premium

People pay money to get less ads and potentially more features all the time. See Kagi which is an alternative to Google and paid, or YouTube Premium.

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#15

Post by Anon1096 »

xyst wrote: post #10

Why pay $14/month for what I can do for free? Also doesn’t say if FB will continue to sell your data or not if you pay the premium

They don't sell your data, the whole way they make money is by keeping hold of your data and selling targeted ads. Why would they sell away their competitive advantage?

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#16

Post by canes123456 »

jeremiahlee wrote: post #3

Meta’s monthly average revenue per user in Europe was $5.96 as of 2023-Q2. $14/month is quite the premium to opt out of its privacy invasion. Does Meta really think it is worth more to people than Spotify or Disney+? ARPU source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

$6 is the average but the set of people willing to pay for add free are both the heaviest users and the ones with the most disposable income. Let’s say you offer this for $6, only the top 10% would pay for it. But the top 10% might generate $10. If you charge $10, only the top 5% would pay and they generate $12, and so on.

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#17

Post by _aavaa_ »

jeremiahlee wrote: post #3

Meta’s monthly average revenue per user in Europe was $5.96 as of 2023-Q2. $14/month is quite the premium to opt out of its privacy invasion. Does Meta really think it is worth more to people than Spotify or Disney+? ARPU source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

I'd wager that 14$/month is actually really cheap given who will pay for it.

The average per user may be $5.96, but I imagine that the people who will pay 14 $/month have more disposable income and are therefore in the demographics that advertisers would pay a premium for.

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#18

Post by aunty_helen »

i_am_jl wrote: post #9
jeremiahlee wrote: post #3

Meta’s monthly average revenue per user in Europe was $5.96 as of 2023-Q2. $14/month is quite the premium to opt out of its privacy invasion. Does Meta really think it is worth more to people than Spotify or Disney+? ARPU source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

I wonder if creating a paid tier of users that won't see ads significantly devalues Meta's advertising proposition. From the perspective of an advertiser, I don't really see the appeal in running an ad on a platform where all the users who have signaled they have disposable income and are willing to pay for online services don't see any ads.

Potentially these paying users weren’t the market anyway. Someone willing to pay to not see your ads maybe hostile to any brand forcing them in front of their eyeballs.

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#19

Post by supriyo-biswas »

I welcome this move, even though social media isn't really my thing, so I wouldn't really be the target customer. (I deleted my Facebook account in 2016 after it gave me a terrible bout of anxiety and depression.)

The tech industry has been dominated by a few players who primarily gain leverage by offering services for free, preventing the entry of smaller players as well as leveraging user data in ways that people would find abhorrent. When you can charge users, you can offer social media services that don't require dark patterns and depend on user addiction to turn a profit.

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#20

Post by bee_rider »

i_am_jl wrote: post #9
jeremiahlee wrote: post #3

Meta’s monthly average revenue per user in Europe was $5.96 as of 2023-Q2. $14/month is quite the premium to opt out of its privacy invasion. Does Meta really think it is worth more to people than Spotify or Disney+? ARPU source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

I wonder if creating a paid tier of users that won't see ads significantly devalues Meta's advertising proposition. From the perspective of an advertiser, I don't really see the appeal in running an ad on a platform where all the users who have signaled they have disposable income and are willing to pay for online services don't see any ads.

That, and also they might expect a user who buys ad-free to be a heavier user than average.
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