Meta has just announced it is launching its new Meta Verified for Business package, which will give all businesses an opportunity to buy a blue checkmark for their brand presence on Facebook and IG.
It will include access to a host of benefits above and beyond the coveted blue checkmark in app, such as increased protection against impersonation, expanded support for accounts, and enhanced visibility through featured spots in comments and search for verified businesses.
 Meta

Get discovered in new ways by being featured as a Meta Verified business. Features may include appearing at or near the top of comments and search results when people type your business name, or appearing as a recommended business to follow in Feed.

So there are a couple of places that this could get you more exposure, though it'll be interesting to see how Meta's algorithm continues to factor in relevance, along with these higher-ranking verified results, especially as more brands sign up.

The same trouble X sometimes has, with comments by verified users being boosted in-stream, which can push down sometimes more relevant comments simply because they are from a non-paying account, although we do not yet know what the impacts of that might be in terms of overall engagement.

In Meta's case, comment sections, especially on trending posts, could be set to be dominated by paying brands seeking more exposure. Presumably, Meta has factored this in, but there is a reason why it removed additional reach benefits for its paid verification package for individual users.

We could be about to find out the same for ourselves.

Meta said that verification for a business plan will start at $NZ34.99 a month, or about $US21, which is approximately the price Meta originally said for its new business verification package.

In its launch some few weeks back, Meta announced that it would be charging $US21.99 on the website per Instagram account and Facebook Page per month but $US27.99 by mobile sign up. Another offer from Meta, you can get a verification combination set for both Facebook and an IG business pages to a package of $US34.99.

That still seems to be the price they are targeting, with regional variation.
It will be interesting to see what initial take-up of the option is like, how users respond to seeing paying verified brands in-stream; the verification checkmark has been a sign of trust and/or notoriety for an awfully long time; the risk of commodifying this, as it stands on X, is it gradually loses any value here, and becomes an utterly irrelevant marker for users.

Suspecting that's already happening - it's almost like X has made the blue tick quite meaningless. Maybe that is why Meta is also selling its blue ticks, and as X changes what a marker means, more are likely to come to become ever more skeptical of checkmarks either way, so might as well make a bit of money if that's going to be eroded?

I don't know, seems like a path to obsolescence, that in selling the checkmark, you're eroding its value over time.

But many brands will pay, with the promise of better support and extra reach, likely to be a strong lure for many.