Facebook and Instagram to Display Less Personalized Ads in the EU to Appease Regulators

Meta announced today that it has agreed to make some changes to the ad experience on Facebook and Instagram in the EU to appease regulators. EU users will get a new option to use Facebook and Instagram for free with less personalized ads, and the company is also slashing the price of its ad-free subscription by 40%.

The company launched its ad-free subscription for Facebook and Instagram in the EU a year ago, and Meta believed at the time that offering the choice between this new paid subscription and an ad-supported experience was enough to comply with the EU’s GDPR and Digital Markets Act (DMA). However, the DMA still requires “gatekeepers” such Facebook and Instagram to offer EU users a way to these services without tracking them.

“The changes we’re announcing today meet EU regulator demands and go beyond what’s required by EU law. And we remain steadfast in our view that personalized ads are the best experience for people and businesses – and because people understand that value, we expect that most people will choose our personalized ads service even with these expanded options,” the company said today.

In the coming weeks, Facebook and Instagram users in the EU who choose to use these platforms with ads will get a new option to see “less personalized ads.” In practice, these ads will only take into account what EU users see on Facebook and Instagram and a “minimal set of data points.” That includes a person’s age, location, gender, and how they interact with Meta’s ads.

Meta argues that this new choice to get less personalized ads will result in “less relevant ads.” Moreover, EU users who choose this new experience will start seeing ad breaks that will be unskippable for a couple of seconds. “This change will help us continue to provide value to advertisers which ensures we can offer people a less personalized ads experience at no charge,” the company said today.

For EU users who prefer to pay for an ad-free experience on Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s subscription for no ads is dropping from €9.99 to €5.99/month on the web, and from €12.99 to €7.99/month on iOS and Android. Meta claimed that this price drop makes its ad-free subscription “one of the cheapest across our peers.”