Advertisers, Brace Yourselves: The Era Of Paid, Ad-Free Social Media Is Here

Ad-free subscriptions are coming to social media.

Snapchat was actually one of the first social platforms to offer a monthly subscription, starting in 2022. Its $3.99 Snapchat+ plan provides subscribers with exclusive, experimental and prerelease features (but still features ads). Snapchat+ had 11 million subscribers in August 2024, an increase of 6 million since September 2023.

Then, late last year, Meta announced plans to charge European users a $14 monthly subscription fee to access ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram, unless those users allow Meta to use their personal data to target ads.

Meanwhile, TikTok is testing a $4.99 monthly ad-free subscription. Snapchat announced a new, $10.50 monthly ad-free subscription plan. And YouTube already has Premium, its ad-free subscription service, which just reached 100 million subscribers globally (including trials).

With the growing number of social media users paying for a premium and often ad-free service, how can marketers engage these audiences?

Work with influencers

Perhaps the easiest way to reach paid social media subscribers is with content created by creators and influencers. When they create content about your brand, those posts and videos will appear as organic content, not ads.

Influencers might charge more to reach paid social media subscribers if they are not able to add promotional links to their content, which enables earning additional affiliate revenues. 

Given the continued growth in influencer and creator marketing, if paid social media subscribers achieve scale on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, marketers will be required to dedicate a significant portion of their marketing budgets to influencer campaigns on these platforms.

Build community with first-party data

Since Apple began eliminating app tracking in 2021, most marketers have been building their customer relationships, adding first-party data to their marketing stacks. With first-party data, marketers can email, message and market to their customers directly without relying on social media platforms.

Collecting first-party data could be a challenge for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) who might not have the bandwidth or technology in house to build, manage and market from their customer relationship management (CRM) or customer data platform (CDP) databases.

First-party data is effective when marketing to existing users. But when it comes to user acquisition, all marketers will need to rely on other marketing channels, including social media.

Working with the platforms

The only way to truly achieve massive scale is by working with platforms directly.

Meta is well-positioned to profit from the trend of users shifting to ad-free subscriptions thanks to its messaging solutions. The company’s click-to-message ads bring prospects into a messaging chat with the marketer, providing their telephone number and the opportunity to continue the relationship with the prospective customer.

It’s ironic, but ad-free subscriptions are being offered by platforms like Meta in part to appease concerns European regulators have regarding targeting data. Yet the platforms will profit via their extensive existing first-party data, from the influx of subscriptions as well as from the marketing opportunities they’ll be best positioned to offer advertisers, like paid messaging via WhatsApp.

That said, not all marketers need massive scale.

In-app and in-game ads

Running ads in games and apps can be just as effective as advertising on social platforms, and it’s sometimes a cheaper alternative.

Though these apps don’t have the same number of users as social platforms, they offer users interested in food and cooking contextually relevant content. A marketer selling food products can advertise in a cooking game like Cooking Dash, Diner Dash Adventures or Restaurant Dash with Gordon Ramsay, or in app in a recipe app like Tasty from BuzzFeed.

And as smaller publishers, app developers will be willing to go the extra mile for an ad budget that might not warrant a customer service rep at a social platform.

The future is still murky

While it may come as a surprise that many users are willing to pay for something they used to get for free, there are still opportunities for savvy marketers to reach these users.

And while social is trending toward ad-free subscriptions, other hot channels are moving in the opposite direction. CTV streamers that built their businesses on paid subscribers are increasingly turning to advertising. That includes Netflix, which once swore it would never include ads.  

And it’s possible that some of these ad-free subscriptions won’t take off. Regarding Meta’s European subscription plan, EU legislators aren’t happy about the “pay or consent” business model.

Time will tell how many social media users will ultimately sign up for paid subscriptions. But early numbers indicate that marketers should prepare their strategies now for reaching users when traditional display ads aren’t an option.

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

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