Meta To Charge Advertisers a Fee To Offset Europe's Digital Taxes

Meta will begin charging advertisers a 2-5% "location fee" to offset digital services taxes imposed by several European countries, including the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Turkey. Reuters reports: The fee, for image or video ads delivered on Meta platforms including WhatsApp click-to-message campaigns and marketing messages together with ads, will apply from July 1 and will also cover other government-imposed levies. "Until now, Meta has covered these additional costs. These changes are part of Meta's ongoing effort to respond to the evolving regulatory landscape and align with industry standards," the company said in the blog.

The location fees are determined by where the audience is located and not the advertisers' business location. Meta listed six countries where the fees will apply, ranging from 2% in the United Kingdom to 3% in France, Italy and Spain and 5% in Austria and Turkey.

For once a regulation is working as intended

[DrStrangluv]

This makes advertising in those areas more expensive, meaning fewer ads for users in those countries. And the ads they do see will be higher value, from companies that know they can make a return, and not low-value/low-return blanket spam. So up until the point where Meta decides it's no longer worthwhile to provide the service, I call this a win.

Re:Good.

[Sique]

And the consumer in this case is the company buying the ad. You as John Q. Public using Meta's services are the product.

Re:

[higuita]

why should they? the public ends paying them anyway, one way or another, at least is included in the price and not hidden

Re:

[Growlley]

Already do meta freeload of the bandwidth I pay for.

Re:

[Alain Williams]

If you visit a web site then you expect to pay for the bandwidth to download the HTML, videos, etc.

If you have a PC you expect to pay for the bandwidth to download system updates; you do not expect/want it to download adverts to be pushed onto your screen thus stopping you doing what you bought the PC for -- this is what Microsoft does.

Re:

[Archfeld]

I hate ads as much as the next but at what point did an ad prevent you from using your PC. I ask this in genuine interest, I've got banner ads, F'n ads as mail in my inbox but I can still function thru those.
I've a win11 laptop for work a win10 surfer, and several flavors of linux...

Re:

[drinkypoo]

This makes advertising in those areas more expensive, meaning fewer ads for users in those countries.

It might mean a smaller pool of differing ads, but it does not mean fewer ads for those users. In fact, Facebook might even increase the number of ads shown, because they will be more motivated to do so in order to sell more ad placement.

And the ads they do see will be higher value, from companies that know they can make a return

That is not how advertising works. It's from companies whose advertising managers think they can make a return.

and not low-value/low-return blanket spam

That is not how facebook works. All content on facebook is tagged automatically. When you interact with it those tags are copied into your "interests", whether tha

Except

[hwstar]

A few companies will double down and make their ads even more obnoxious and pushy as a desperate attempt to get people to buy the product. Hopefully this tactic backfires.

Re:

[sabbede]

Have you ever seen obnoxious or pushy ads go away? I can think of one - "Head On, apply directly to the forehead (x4)". While Kars for Kids has been running a painfully bad jingle for decades, because for whatever godawful reason, it works.

Obnoxious ads stick with you, and that's what advertisers want. I worked at a car dealership for a while, and the ads they ran were embarrassingly bad and irritating. I asked the sales manager about it, and his response was essentially, "well, you remember them, ri

Re:

[SvnLyrBrto]

> Kars for Kids

The weird thing is that they ARE somehow successful. Because for me, that godawful racket may have made me plenty aware of the brand; but every time I hear that noise it fills me with a burning hatred that, every time, reinforces my conviction that they will never, under any circumstances, get one red cent from me, regardless of...

... by the way it's not even a children's charity. It's actually some religious organization masquerading as a children's charity to scam people into giving m

Re:

[Dragonslicer]

by the way it's not even a children's charity. It's actually some religious organization masquerading as a children's charity to scam people into giving money to their church. That makes them extra-double-super loathsome.

If I remember correctly, it isn't quite that bad. I think it's for a religious school, so it is money being spent on children and not a scam by religious leaders to make money for themselves. It certainly isn't transparent in the ads, and I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to donate to them.

Re:

[snowshovelboy]

I would expect the opposite. I would expect that fewer ads in ad inventory would lead to lower quality ads being shown overall.

Re:

[sabbede]

But what will actually happen is that all ad-supported platforms will apply this surcharge to advertisers, who will then raise their prices. The number of ads won't change, because companies still need to do it and prices will rise across the industry.

It will bring in more tax revenue, but it is directly inflationary.

Re:

[Baron_Yam]

Is anything worthwhile advertised on Facebook? Given the typical demographic I expect it's all scammy stuff looking for credulous people. The kind of stuff that's already priced at the maximum they think they can extract from people.

That aside, advertisers aren't chained to Facebook, they look at the effectiveness per dollar spent and this increase will drive them to shift at least some of their spending to other advertising options.

Re:

[Dragonslicer]

I've seen ads for a small performance venue having shows that I've gone to. I think that might be it, though. The vast majority of Facebook ads that I see are completely irrelevant to me.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

But what will actually happen is that all ad-supported platforms will apply this surcharge to advertisers, who will then raise their prices. The number of ads won't change, because companies still need to do it and prices will rise across the industry.

It will bring in more tax revenue, but it is directly inflationary.

Which is fine. Advertising costs going up on Facebook mean marketing firms need to consider their ad spend more carefully.

Not every ad market will rise - just a few via certain platforms. Europ

Re:

[alvinrod]

It probably means scummier scammier advertisements because that's who can afford to live in that environment. The other side effect will be more advertising in the content itself. The marketing firms aren't going to let themselves go out of business and they'll find alternative cheaper ways of selling their services. Regardless of whether this is a net positive, it isn't the win that you're envisioning.

Re:

[Fons_de_spons]

Knowing companies, they will charge this through to the consumers of those countries. In school they thought us that this tax will be payed partially by the company and partially by the consumer. The ratio depends on the slope of the demand and salve curves.

Re:

[thegarbz]

meaning fewer ads for users in those countries

It means nothing of the sort. It means less variance for ads for users in those countries. It reminds me of that time Spotify only had one customer and back when I was on the free tier I heard the same single advert every hour for months. The frequency a user experiences ads doesn't change if the number of advertisers don't show up.

Re:

[mjwx]

This makes advertising in those areas more expensive, meaning fewer ads for users in those countries. And the ads they do see will be higher value, from companies that know they can make a return, and not low-value/low-return blanket spam. So up until the point where Meta decides it's no longer worthwhile to provide the service, I call this a win.

This may be a boon in disguise.

My Facebook regularly gets inundated with "follow me" posts that are nothing but clickbait scam, so much so that I only visit once a month these days. If the cost of running this clickbait becomes too great, we'll see less of it. I may actually go back to using Facebook.

I want Facebook to die

[dskoll]

The good news is that the number of monthly active Facebook users has pretty much stalled [demandsage.com] since 2023.

Now, can we see it decline? Please? Pretty please?

Re:

[higuita]

hey, delete your account and convince other people to do the same...
if not that, post in your facebook account that you will not use facebook anymore and ask others to do the same and do the same post. if enough people see the post, it may trigger a leave movement... but facebook is so huge because everyone created accounts for their parents, uncles, grandpas, etc ... they are mostly unused accounts, but some still use them.

also stop using instagram, whatsapp and other meta alt names. I personnaly refuse t

Re:

[dskoll]

I no longer have a Facebook account as of January 2025.

I also don't have Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. accounts. I don't use Meta products at all.

And believe me, I am doing my best [skoll.ca] to convince people not to use Facebook.

Re: I want Facebook to die

[Malc]

Sadly canâ(TM)t get rid of WhatsApp because itâ(TM)s ubiquitous, at least outside N. America. Iâ(TM)ve managed to avoid Instagram, but some companies only provide information there, so sometimes I have to ask my wife to check. Itâ(TM)s annoying.

Re:

[dskoll]

Of course you can avoid Whatsapp. You say: "Sorry, I don't have Whatsapp". If people want to communicate with you, they'll find another way. If not, then they are probably not worth communicating with anyway.

I use Signal. I reckon its about the least-enshittified chat program so far.

Re: I want Facebook to die

[Malc]

Example: Iâ(TM)m trying to organise tours in Tunisia right now. I donâ(TM)t want to be making international phone calls and texts. They all use WhatsApp. Itâ(TM)s enough work as it is without making my life harder.

Signal is missing features for businesses. It doesnâ(TM)t have a way to group a bunch of channels you can easily discover. Thereâ(TM)s more. As a replacement for simple texting with friends and family it might suffice, but you still have to convince them all to both

Re: I want Facebook to die

[Malc]

Iâ(TM)m using the term North American incorrectly; Iâ(TM)m really referring to people north of Mexico ;)

Re:

[dskoll]

Well, I've never used WhatsApp, so I don't know all the features. There's also something called "email". Remember that?

But OK, I'm retired and not in the travel industry, so I'll have to take your word for it.

Re:

[Malc]

So many forms of communication available, no wonder we struggle to communicate.

Thanks for rubbing it in that you're retired ;). Hope I wasn't too full-on before.

Re: I want Facebook to die

[Malc]

We can dream. MySpace didnâ(TM)t get as big, but it still seems to exist. Not a good sign.

Re:

[dskoll]

Facebook fading into the same amount of (ir)relevance as MySpace would be fine by me!

Reminder

[Alypius]

Remember kids, corporations don't pay taxes!