Today, Meta’s revenue comes primarily from targeted advertising that the company displays on its social networks, or on other third-party apps and sites. However, the group now wishes to diversify. And in the coming years, it should increasingly rely on paid functions.

Currently, Facebook already includes paid functions, such as the stars that can be sent during a live video broadcast, or paid Facebook groups. However, until now, these paid functions were not really a priority.

But as an article published by The Verge reports, Meta is going to bet a little more on this source of income. And it has just created a new group, called New Monetization Experiences, within the organization chart, to look into the subject.

Advertising won’t go away, but paid features should become more important

Quoted by the American media, vice-president John Hegeman, who oversees this group, assured that Meta will continue to develop its advertising platform. He also clarified that the idea is not to allow people to pay to disable ads.

“I think we see opportunities to create new types of products, features and experiences that people would be willing to pay for and would be happy to pay for”he said.

In the short term, paid features should not have a significant share on the company’s revenue. However, according to Hegeman, “If there are opportunities both to create new value and significant revenue lines and also to provide some diversification, that will obviously be something that will be attractive. »

And within five years, for this manager, it is possible that these paid functions could make the difference. Unfortunately, he did not indicate which paid functions could be launched on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meta will probably take inspiration from the competition

But in any case, Meta closely follows what is done in the industry. Indeed, its competitors are also diversifying in order to have additional revenue streams in addition to online advertising revenue.

For example, Twitter already offers its Twitter Blue subscription which allows you to benefit from some advantages on the platform, including early access to new features. And more recently, Snapchat launched its paid version which would already be a hit. As for TikTok, it is studying a paid version aimed at creators.

“We are obviously attentive to what is happening in the industry”said the vice president of Meta, according to The Verge article. “And I think there are several companies that have done some interesting things in this space that I hope we can learn from and emulate over time. »

Otherwise, it should be remembered that on WhatsApp, Meta already offers a paid subscription for its WhatsApp Business application for companies. This allows SMBs to use the same account on more devices to better manage WhatsApp communications with customers.