Facing legal pressure in Europe over a binary "pay us or consent to ad tracking" choice it currently offers regional users of its social networks Facebook and Instagram, Meta has changed how its regional ad business works once again. Little wonder when failure to comply this time risks fines of up to 10% of its global annual turnover.

This is the last attempt by the adtech giant to sneak its surveillance-ads machine past EU laws, as the company now claims it will offer "less personalized ads" to users. The European regulatory framework has tightened somewhat with the advent of the bloc's flagship market contestability regulation, the Digital Markets Act, or DMA, earlier in the year.

In a blog post saying it would move within "weeks" to how it targets ads at EU users, first reported by the WSJ, Meta said that users in the region who opt not to pay a subscription fee it launched just over a year ago (for ad-free versions of its social media services) will soon be shown ads that use less personal data for "context"-based targeting than is currently the case. Cross-service (and cross-site) tracking and profiling, also known as surveillance, is what Meta currently uses.

Or in other words: Meta is finally being forced to quit being quite so creepy about ads in the EU. Of course, the tech giant may be forced to go further still in the future when regulators reach a final decision on the DMA probe.

"Less personalized ads"
The data points Meta claims it will use for the "less personalized" ad targeting that's coming for regional users are slated to include "a person's age, location, gender, and how a person engages with ads."

Whether that will be enough to satisfy EU regulators remains to be seen. The bloc is expected to conclude its DMA probe next year. But it's worth noting that Meta is also facing ongoing privacy challenges to its ad tracking model under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and consumer protection complaints too.

The DMA core legal issue for Meta is that, as a designated gatekeeper, it needs to obtain users' consent to combine their personal data between designated core platform services and other services. (It is also GDPR standards regarding consent that come into play here.)

Both Facebook and Instagram are CPS — meaning that, since early March when DMA compliance kicked in, Meta has needed permission to track and profile service users' activity in order to micro-target them with ads in the EU.

Thing is, Meta hasn't asked people's consent for all this invasive tracking and profiling — it's just offered an opt-in/opt-out choice of either accepting the surveillance or paying them a subscription fee for ad-free versions of the service.

The EU opened an investigation into this binary choice under DMA in March. Then, in July, the Commission announced preliminary findings, saying it believes Meta's "pay or consent" model does not comply with the rules.

Meta's probe by the Commission continues. But — meanwhile — the company has now made a new step toward trying to reconfigure its ad business in a manner it claims would meet regulators' requirements.

The changes we're announcing today meet EU regulator demands and go beyond what's required by EU law, Meta said in the blog post, without providing any detail to substantiate the claim.

This also claims that it "remain[s] steadfast in our view that personalized ads are the best experience for people and businesses." So there's some mixed messaging in its PR as Meta rails against making a business decision it prefers not to .

Ad-free sub price-drop
In addition to scaling back how much personal data it will use for ad targeting, Meta says it is cutting the cost of the ad-free subscriptions by 40% immediately.

This will reduce the price of month subscription to ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram from €9.99 to €5.99/month web; and €12.99 to €7.99/month mobile (iOS and Android). (NB: Meta claims the higher cost on mobile is fees charged by Google and Apple through their app stores.)

In addition, for users with more than one account of Facebook or Instagram, the company will charge €4/month on the web and €5/month on iOS and Android for each additional account.
Thus Meta may be hoping to recover some revenue it might lose in having to run less targeted ads by picking some subs for ad-free versions of the services. Its blog post suggests that it will be degrading the user experience for users of the free versions of Facebook and Instagram in Europe by running unskippable ads that periodically take over the whole screen, which could drive some irritated users to shell out to go fully ad-free.

Meta says lower ad-free pricing will make it "one of the cheapest across our peers." What it's grounding that in isn't clear, since other social media services, including TikTok, are free to access.

Meta got asked about the announcements, and the EU declined to render a judgment on while its DMA investigation continues.

"The new model under Meta's full responsibility is not endorsed or agreed with by the Commission." This according to Commission spokesperson Lea Zuber as quoted by TechCrunch.

She added that talking of the pending non-compliance proceedings was a bit too early: "Our objective is to bring Meta to full and effective compliance in this matter as soon as possible."