Exploring Ad-Free Subscriptions: TikTok, X, and Meta’s New Approach

Ads are a pest, especially on a user’s social media feed. It gets in the way and can be the most annoying hindrance to interesting videos, posts, or news articles that one might be watching or consuming. YouTube already has a premium subscription that allows users to watch limitless videos, ad-free, and ever since the change from short form to a new approach of long-form videos, TikTok is the newest social media channel in the game to experiment with the idea of leisurely scrolling without ads through a subscription-based model.

As of October 2023, the plan entails charging users $4.99 per month to omit ads from their TikTok feed. The thought is still in the air, “but the bottom line is that TikTok is at least considering offering an ad-free version, for a monthly fee, joining Meta, and potentially X, in providing an ad-free experience tier.” — Cited from an article on MarketingDrive.com.

Other social platforms following this same strategy of ad-free subscriptions could potentially be Meta, on both Facebook and Instagram.

So why now? Why wasn’t this thought of before and why are social media companies now looking to implement ad-free subscriber plans?

The driving factor comes from the EU and its digital privacy concerns. The encroachment of data through ads has become a growing concern in the European Union and users in that region will now have the option to opt out of all personalization that uses their data.

“X owner Elon Musk has also been discussing a higher-priced, ad-free tier of X Premium for some time, though that’s less tied to EU changes and more linked to X’s push to maximize subscription take-up, in order to combat bot armies, and expand its revenue potential” as stated on Marketing Drive, a digital marketing news source. However, growing concerns with the platform ‘X’ have many existing users leaving the platform at a rapid rate recently.

With X, Facebook, and Instagram all considering ad-free subscriptions, so far, YouTube and TikTok have been the only ones to implement it.

My reaction to this subscription-based model, ad-free, for all social platforms varies depending on the platform. With Tik Tok, my thinking of it is that it may not be worth the platform exploring this as an option, at least not at this stage outside of the EU. If it works within the EU due to the concerns listed above, perhaps the whole model could expand globally on TikTok. In X’s case, I think separating the class of paid subscribers and giving them the blue tick and exclusive content is beneficial, as there is then a value-add within the premium category of X. Value addition is the blue tick and exclusive content for Premium Subscribers. What Musk needs to be careful about is that he does not disenfranchise his current Twitter users because they feel that he has created a separate classification and they’re being ignored. He needs to ensure that the primary X users stick around (non-subscribers) so advertising revenue stays from ad suppliers. What X gains in the subscription, X might lose in the advertising revenue. For Facebook and Instagram, I could see ad subscriptions potentially being a useful and high-value addition for existing users as people may be keen to scroll without ads and get exclusive content from their favorite content creators/influencers.

In my opinion, the pros of ad-free subscriptions on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok, are enhanced user experience, privacy and data protection, and support for content creators. The cons of ad-free subscription-based models on social channels are exclusive access, revenue shift and impact on free users, and lastly content creator dependency. Truly, there can be a balance of good and maybe not-so-desirable traits for ad-free subscribers.

All in all, subscription-based models without ads could work, there would just have to be rational reasoning for it and equal benefits for non-payers and payers of the service.

Until next time, digital marketers!