Recently, Meta announced a brand-new service for its social media platforms. This service can turn off advertisements for users in exchange for a fixed monthly fee. As the social media giant owns both Facebook and Instagram, it’s a significant change for anyone’s digital marketing efforts.
With Facebook ads and Instagram ads changing, the digital marketing landscape is expected to undergo significant shifts. With users having a legal means to remove ads, the balance between organic and paid ads will change, not to mention the possibility of new opportunities to get your brand noticed among the sea of other competitors.
What is Meta
Meta is a technology conglomerate formerly known as Facebook that owns a wide range of platforms, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus. The business owns a significant portion of real estate in the online social media space.
Given its massive share of the online space, it has also become a large player in online advertising. Offering a variety of paid services for its platforms. The company manages Facebook ads and Instagramads as part of its services. Allowing thousands of businesses to advertise to their users. Leveraging powerful analytical tools for their digital marketing strategies.
What is Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a broad term that encompasses all online marketing efforts. In most cases, this form of digital marketing is exclusive to online spaces or digital platforms, though there can be crossover with real-world events.
The primary purpose of digital marketing is to utilise user-generated information to target, refine, and direct advertising campaigns, ensuring that the billions of internet users receive tailored ads. If you have ever run Facebook ads, you will have seen the amount of information available for such purposes.
Improving returns while keeping costs low by avoiding expensive traditional methods, such as billboard advertising, which can cost upwards of £15,000 per prime slot.
As a digital marketing agency that provides digital marketingin Warrington, we understand the effectiveness of digital marketing and social media marketing campaigns.
How is Meta Changing?
The upcoming change to their platforms, as reported by the BBC in a recent article, includes a monthly paid service that sees users remove ads from their experience. For the price of £2.99 a month, users can use Meta products without seeing any ads. Effectively trading immediate, up-front payment for later ad revenue by allowing users to avoid seeing them at all. For social media marketing, as part of a digital marketing campaign, such as with Facebook ads, it represents a significant shift in the way things are done.
Typically, social media marketing, or similar digital services, involves a combination of organic and paid marketing efforts. With a casual posting schedule across social media platforms to keep brands active in the digital space, while a paid campaign brings in users from elsewhere.
For those relying on paid ads for their digital marketing, it’s quite a turn. This is because it radically changes how the old ecosystem of digital marketing functioned across social media.
What These Changes Mean for Your Digital Marketing
Let’s dive into some of the ways this affects social media marketing and the work of a digital marketing agency, like ours!
Targeting Changes
The move may impact your ability to target audiences. This is because user data is more restricted if a user is paying for their no-ads account. Moreover, a proportion of users will now be able to officially opt out of seeing your ads.
Whereas previously only certain extensions could block your ads from being seen, the new paid service offers a direct way that’s open to everyone. This means that a sizable portion of your target audience could completely block out your ads.
Specific demographics may be more willing to tolerate ads or pay for a subscription to block them. So the current analytical targeting method might not be as reliable as it once was, given that a portion of the social media accounts you’re targeting may be impossible to target in the first place.
Disabling Ads
Naturally, this will take time to assess as the feature rolls out. However, it can be said that for social media marketing, the loss of ad slots across user pages is a significant one early on. Downsizing the possible traction your ad may get and the reach to your audience.
It’s quite simple. If your digital marketing can’t be seen, it can’t work.
Growth of Organic Social Media Marketing
This has rightfully led to the question of where organic social media marketing fits in. As paid services wane, it’s a ripe opportunity for organic advertising to rise. Since this will, in effect, be the only advertising that paying subscribers will see, it is crucial to ensure it is effective.
Therefore, businesses, including your own, will likely try to pump up their organic social media marketing as part of their online marketing efforts. Expanding into new channels or looking to bring fresh content to draw in an audience that they can no longer pay for.
While the playing field remains skewed in favour of larger businesses, opportunities will emerge for smaller-scale businesses. This then increases the competitiveness of the social media space as the power of Facebook ads and Instagram ads is rebalanced.
Increase in Opportunities
As mentioned, the blow to paid marketing means organic social growth is more relevant than it has been in some time. Meaning that a business with an effective digital marketing strategy, or one utilising a reputable digital marketing agency, can significantly outperform its competitors.
On the other hand, ads will become more specific, and the audience will become more diverse, as both paying and non-paying users emerge. A combined strategy that targets both paid and organic efforts here will yield the greatest gains. For instance, you can combine naturally popular videos with Instagram ads.
Using the details of who looks at paid marketing and who has the spare money to pay for it, it’s an effective way to maximise results.
Looking to Upgrade Your Digital Marketing Efforts with A Digital Agency?
If some of this has gone over your head, don’t worry! That’s exactly what Mosaic is here to help with.
As a digital marketing agency in Warrington, we have decades of experience in the field. Offering web development, SEO, graphic design and digital marketing services.
If you need assistance in defining your digital marketing strategy, please get in touch with us today via our contact form, by emailing info@mosaicdigitalmedia.co.uk, or by calling 01925563960.
