Greetings, community! We recently wrote about Meta’s new subscription and its impact on affiliate marketing. It’s been over two months since the company announced new changes, which we will talk about today. Note that all these changes occur within the framework of changes to European legislation, in particular the new requirements of the European Union Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Digital Markets Act (DMA) – What is it?
The EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) has been around for quite some time, adopted in the spring of 2022. A year later, it came into effect, but large companies had time to adapt their products and the companies’ policies in general to the new conditions of existence in the European market.
The main idea of DMA is to create conditions that would create competitive conditions for everyone. That is, the main factor is the antitrust policy introduced regarding the digital market through this law.
What do we have now? Apple begins to get rid of its proprietary Lightning, replaced by more common USB Type-C. Moreover, Apple also plans to allow users to download apps from third-party sources, which is almost wild for this tech giant.
Meta is no exception. This corporation is of interest to us primarily because many affiliate marketers use its advertising tools to cover a vast amount of traffic. After all, Facebook and Instagram are among the most popular social networks in the world, and they are all part of the Meta universe. Or at least, that was the case until the DMA.
In Compliance with DMA, Meta “Disconnects” Its Products
What was it like before? Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger were like one ecosystem, despite the fact that they are technically different products. However, users of these apps saw the same advertisement, and the advertiser could “reach” the user of Insta or FB using one convenient dashboard.
The profit for advertisers was also in the constant exchange of information about the same user between all Meta services. It allowed a better understanding of what this user consumes. Therefore, targeting worked at the high level that could provide Meta with those insane profits.
Currently, according to a statement from Meta itself, little changes in this plan. You still have the ability to manage targeting and pour traffic from all Meta services using one dashboard. Cross-posting (the ability to publish posts on different social networks using one dashboard) also remains available. How long this will be relevant is hard to answer.
So, What Changes?
According to official statements, the changes will affect users more than advertisers (including affiliate marketers, obviously). For example, if you previously could see a product on the FB marketplace and write to the seller directly in the messenger, now such a function will not be available. Because now the seller is not obliged to have an account in the messenger to use the marketplace separately. And as buyers, you will have to write him an email.
Essentially, the user is at a loss. Although competition is supposed to create conditions where he would gain advantages, it’s hard to imagine anyone being happy about spending a lot of time on processes that previously happened with one or two clicks.
It all looks quite awkward and absurd. But considering how sanctions against country 404 work, nothing surprises anymore. Such are European laws.
But There’s One “But”
The devil is in the details. There is one most important change that can completely break everything we talked about today. Meta is also introducing another feature that will allow the user to choose whether to allow Meta services to share information about them, which was by default before .
Technically, it will look something like this: the user will receive a notification that he now chooses whether information about him will be transmitted between platforms, and will be offered to agree or refuse. According to official statements, this will happen on a separate tab, i.e., as intrusively as possible and so that you want it or not, but you will have to choose.
Based on this, we can expect changes in the following:
- It will become more challenging to farm accounts, and it will be more difficult to warm them up;
- The reach of your ad campaigns may decrease;
- The statistics we will see in the advertising dashboard will not be entirely reliable, it will be more challenging to analyze.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What this will lead to in reality, we will see in March. Because March 3 is the deadline for Meta to implement all the necessary changes to create conditions for compliance with the DMA Law.
Let’s also not forget that all these changes concern the services’ functioning specifically in the territory of the European Union, the European Economic Area, and Switzerland.
What to Do If You’re Used to Pouring Traffic from Meta?
Everyone is well aware that Meta services are almost the main source of traffic for many advertisers. Moreover, if we understand this, then Meta does even more. So, it’s worth waiting to see what alternatives and solutions for advertisers Meta will propose. And they will propose them because their capitalization directly depends on this direction. We’ve already talked about how much money Zuckerberg makes from advertising here.
Continue testing connections with a small budget to practically assess the scale of changes concerning your specific ad campaigns. It is entirely possible that you won’t even notice all these changes. Especially if you work with a specific GEO, for example, that does not belong to Europe.
Also, come join us in our Telegram community to collectively look for a solution to this problem. Because for some affiliate marketers, this is indeed a significant inconvenience that they need to find a way around.
With respect, Your Geek!
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