In a blog article on Tuesday, 12 November, Meta announced plans to change how it delivers ads to European users of Instagram and Facebook who do not pay a fee to access the services. The tiered Consent or Pay model remains in place but includes an updated ad-free subscription option at a lower cost (€12.99 to €7.99 for mobile users and €9.99 to €5.99 for web access) and a new free model with less personalised ads.
The new free version will show ads using contextual markers based on other content users view in a particular session, combined with a "minimal set of data points" such as age, location, gender, and ad interaction.
In certain instances, Meta intends to introduce ad breaks to allow advertisers to connect with users. In practice, this means that the ads will be unskippable and cover the whole screen. Meta also intends to prompt users to confirm whether they want to change their subscription. This could be interpreted as making the service more annoying in an attempt to convince users to agree to personalised ads.
In a statement on LinkedIn, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) said: "Less invasive ads are great news: while the solution still needs to be assessed, we welcome the fact that an important platform announces that it will offer a new choice for free with less detailed profiling for advertising."
In a separate response, Austrian lawyer, privacy activist and honorary chair of the not-for-profit organisation NOYB, Max Schrems, said: "Overall this just looks like another attempt to ignore EU law by annoying people into consent with huge unskippable ads. Users must have an equal choice between ads that use their personal data and ads that do not. We doubt that Meta's fourth iteration of trying to bypass EU law will be accepted."
A LinkedIn post by Thomas Höppner highlights that the move is designed to bring its processing in line with competition requirements under Article 5(2) of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), in which gatekeepers must seek users’ consent for combining their personal data.
Additional commentary from the IAPP.
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