Modo25 / News & Insights / Digital news to watch: Facebook and Instagram to get £2.99 UK subscription fee to stop ads

Digital news to watch: Facebook and Instagram to get £2.99 UK subscription fee to stop ads

In this week’s digital news, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta is launching paid subscriptions for users who do not want to see adverts in the UK. Google Ads can now surface a recommendation to link your unlinked Google Analytics account to your Google Ads account. The neat part is that the linking of your Google Ads and analytics account can be done with a single click.

Global ChatGPT usage shows adoption itself is the value, altering productivity, consumer habits, and market opportunities for the C-suite. Evergreen content delivered steady traffic, but AI summaries could be eroding clicks and undermining its reliability as a publishing strategy

President Donald Trump, on Thursday last week, signed an executive order approving a proposed deal that would keep TikTok alive in the U.S. The return of banned YouTube creators could reshape ad reach and placements.

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Facebook and Instagram to get £2.99 UK subscription fee to stop ads

Meta will soon offer UK users of Facebook and Instagram a paid option to remove adverts, starting at £2.99 per month on the web and £3.99 on iOS or Android. Unlike EU users, Britons cannot choose to see less personalised ads for free. The move follows UK data watchdog guidance on “consent or pay” models and aims to give users control over whether their data is used for targeted advertising. The ICO welcomed the lower UK price, saying it aligns better with privacy law. Meta claims the subscription undercuts EU costs and supports a “pro-growth, pro-innovation” regulatory environment.

Read more here.

Google Ads will recommend you link to your Google Analytics account with one click

Google Ads now suggests linking any unconnected Google Analytics account directly from the Campaigns page. Eligible advertisers will see this in the Recommendations section and can link with one click. Google says linked accounts typically see a 23% rise in conversions and a 10% drop in cost per conversion. It’s an interesting figure considering they don’t say where that comes from. Even if you doubt the figures, integrating Google Analytics (GA4) helps you track and improve ad performance.

Read more here.

How people use ChatGPT & what it means for the C-suite

A new report by the National Bureau of Economic Research has noted that ChatGPT adoption has accelerated rapidly, reaching approximately 700 million weekly users, a shift rarely seen in technology. Crucially, this widespread adoption does not always translate into referral traffic (clicks to your website) but rather represents a fundamental change in consumer behaviour and productivity. Most usage falls into three categories: practical guidance, information seeking, and writing. This means marketers must shift their focus to maintaining brand visibility within AI-mediated discovery and recognising that adoption itself is the new value signal.

Read more here.

Are AI search summaries making evergreen articles obsolete?

Ahrefs’ Tim Soulo recently noted that AI search summaries (like Google’s AI Overviews) are causing traffic erosion for traditional, foundational, “evergreen” content by satisfying the user query directly in the search results. This has led some industry figures to suggest shifting content strategy toward “Fast SEO” (trending topics). The disruption is compounded by Query Fan-Out, where AI answers the initial query, but the user clicks on a cited link for a follow-up question, effectively diverting traffic away from the original target article.

Read more here.

Trump approves TikTok deal through executive order

President Donald Trump signed an executive order yesterday approving a proposal that could keep TikTok alive in the US. The deal would involve creating a new joint-venture company that will oversee TikTok’s US business. China has yet to approve the terms. No representatives from ByteDance were present at the signing, and the company has not acknowledged that a transaction is taking place. There is no indication that the Chinese government has made changes to laws that would be necessary for a deal to take place.

Read more here.

YouTube to reinstate banned channels

Previously banned YouTube creators are being allowed back, giving them access to ads again and creating more inventory while also introducing brand-safety concerns. Alphabet says it will prioritise free expression and replace some fact-checking with context notes. The change could expand ad reach and intensify competition for views, but advertisers will need to monitor placements closely to avoid controversial adjacency.

Read more here.

For more information on any of this week’s stories or for support with your digital marketing efforts. Our friendly team would be more than happy to discuss your requirements. Drop us an email at team@modo25.com

Author

Tom Pickard

Author

Tom Pickard

With over ten years of experience across multiple digital marketing, Tom works as our Head of Paid Search at Modo25. Tom specialises in marketing technology such as feed management, marketing optimisation machine learning and paid marketing strategies.

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