Johnny Ryan, a former advertising executive who now challenges the industry as a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, says that in some ways advertisers are easier pay lords to please than subscribers.”The advertiser in general doesn’t give a damn about what the content is,” he says. “Every now and then there’s a scandal, but in general they’re not that political.” There is an old adage “if you’re not paying for the product, you ARE the product” – meaning, if you are using something for free, then the company which owns it is taking the data you put on it and charging firms to advertise at you instead. It’s an established and lucrative business model. “Data is the new oil!” was a bold catchphrase I heard a lot in the tech industry, a few years ago.But perhaps that oil well is running a little low on reserves, because tech firms are increasingly looking at subscriptions as an alternative offer.Six months ago, Meta introduced an ad-free subscription model for Facebook and Instagram in Europe. It is €13 ($14; £11) per month on mobile devices, which is about average for an online service fee. The tech giant declined to tell me how many people have signed up so far.Now, this was ostensibly in order to conform with new EU legislation about consumer choice. However it’s backfired: Meta now finds itself under investigation, external because the EU Commission says that the binary decision of either handing over money OR data may not be good enough.Snapchat Plus, which includes an ad-free option that’s still rolling out, hit one million subscribers within just a few weeks of its launch in June 2022. And in 2023 YouTube’s premium service, which offers ad-free streaming, reached 100 million users. “The hassle-free experience of simply being able to enjoy content, without the fear of ‘when will the adverts come’ is something that I need in my life,” says James Hacking, founder of the media agency Socially Powerful, and a long-term YouTube subscriber.Netflix, on the other hand, launched a cheaper subscription deal that includes ads, and Amazon Prime introduced adverts to its video platform, and now charges users (who are already subscribers) an extra fee to remove them again.Johnny Ryan argues that this hybrid model represents the worst of both worlds. It’s a “weird thing”, he says, to be both seeing ads and paying a fee.Subscriptions in general are “part of the move from a market that’s new and growing into a market that is saturated,” says Azeem Azhar, founder of the tech-themed subscription newsletter Exponential View. “There are no new customers to get, so you need to figure out how you add revenue to your business.”There is a segment of internet users who are willing to pay, just as there’s a segment of airline users who are willing to pay to board more quickly.”But, he cautions, social networks in particular need to tread carefully.



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