Meta’s New Consent-or-Pay Model Gains ICO Approval

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has welcomed Meta’s decision to shift its advertising model, signalling that the company will now ask users to either consent to personalised ads or pay for an ad-free experience.

This marks a notable change in how Meta monetises its services in the UK and offers a view into how UK regulators are engaging with new business models’ digital advertising.

What the ICO says

In its statement, the ICO emphasises several points:

Meta is being asked to obtain explicit consent from users before using their personal data for targeted advertising – rather than relying on a default permission embedded in the platforms’ terms of service.
The new consent-or-pay model gives users a choice: either accept personalised advertising or pay monthly subscriptions to remove ads.
Importantly, the ICO notes that Meta has lowered its subscription starting price in the UK (from £2.99 per month), bringing it close to half that of EU users (from €99).
The ICO expects Meta to monitor and assess user behaviour under the new model, ensuring compliance with UK data protection law.
The ICO promises to track how consent-or-pay models operate in this sector, to ensure consumers are empowered to make choices such as giving their consent freely.

The regulatory background

Over the past year the ICO has been preparing its stance toward business models where user data and advertising choices are monetised. Earlier this year, it published guidance on how consent-or-pay models may be consistent with UK law, providing they are designed carefully.

One of the trickiest legal principles here is that, under UK GDPR and Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), consent must be freely given. In practice, that means users must not feel pressured, coerced or forced into consenting just to avoid paying.

The guidance sets out factors to be considered, including:

Power imbalance: If there is a clear power imbalance between the service provider and user, it is unlikely that people can freely give their consent if they have no realistic choice about using the service. For example, they may rely on the service but cannot afford to pay to access it.
Appropriate fee: An appropriate fee for access without personalised advertising must be set. It is unlikely that people can freely give their consent is the fee is inappropriately high, making it an unrealistic choice.
Equivalent core services: Additional benefits or features can be included in both paid-for or free services. However, core services must be broadly equivalent across all options to ensure that users have a free choice.
Privacy by design: Options must be presented fairly, with clear information about what each option will involve. If they are not, or if the design choices are engineered to push users towards a particular option, it is unlikely to be compliant.

Meta’s European consent-to-pay troubles

Meta’s consent-or-pay experiment is not new – in the EU, Meta previously rolled out such models, only to face regulatory backlash. Under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) and related privacy rules, regulators found that the all-or-nothing choice was potentially coercive, and that Meta’s implementation breached consumer rights.

Notably, in April 2025, the European Commission fined Meta €200 million over its previous consent-or-pay model in the EU. They stated that the model breached DMA from when it was introduced in November 2023.

Meta tweaked the model in November 2024 to use less personal data for targeted advertising, which prompted additional EU scrutiny.

The UK’s regulators are taking a more flexible stance. The ICO has acknowledged the same concerns about fairness and coercion but appears open to the idea that consent-or-pay can be lawful if carefully designed. The ICO has welcomed Meta’s decision to lower the cost of the subscription in Britain, signalling that affordability and accessibility will be key factors in determining whether users’ choices are meaningful. In other words, while the EU has treated the model with outright scepticism, the UK regulator is willing to test whether a “balanced” consent-or-pay framework can work in practice, though with close monitoring and no guarantees that Meta’s approach will ultimately pass legal muster.

What Meta is doing (or proposing) in the UK

Meta has detailed components of its new UK models:

Ad-free subscriptions will cost £2.99 per month or £3.99 via iOS and Android apps.
The subscription covers all Facebook and Instagram accounts linked via Meta’s Accounts Centre; additional accounts cost extra.
If a user subscribes, their personal data will no longer be used for targeted ads.

This model is, in effect, a binary choice: either continue using the services for free but be tracked for ad targeting or pay for ad-free usage.

What this means for users, Meta and advertisers

For users

Greater transparency and choice: The ICO is pushing for meaningful, informed consent, rather than users being locked into opaque data practices.
Privacy via payment: Only those willing to pay will avoid tracking – although critics argue this may turn privacy into a premium right. Researchers say users often see paywalls for privacy as unfair or coercive.
Potential for behavioural shifts: How many will pay versus those who accept tracking will be a key test. The ICO insists Meta must monitor those choices.

For Meta

Revenue pressure: Advertising makes up a vast majority of Meta’s income. Pivoting to a model where users pay to avoid ads risks significant revenue shifts.
Regulatory tightrope: Meta must satisfy the ICO’s requirements to ensure the model is genuinely optional, non-coercive, and legally defensible.
Testing ground: The UK could become a proving ground for new ad-funded/paid hybrid models.

For advertisers and digital marketing

Audience fragmentation: If a significant subset (segment within a target demographic) of users opts out of ad targeting, the reach and precision of ad campaigns may be impaired.
Increased costs per reach: Advertisers may need to use more creative strategies to reach users not opting into targeting.
Shift in strategy: Brands may lean more into organic content, creators, community marketing, or broad contextual ads.

Meta’s revised advertising model is more than just a shift in how users encounter ads on Facebook and Instagram – it’s a test case for the future of digital business models. The ICO’s cautious approval suggests that, in the UK at least, there is room for platforms to experiment with consent-or-pay approaches, provided they are transparent, affordable and respect user rights.

Whether this balance will hold is another matter. Critics warn that privacy risks becoming a paid privilege rather than a universal right, while regulators must ensure that consent under such schemes remains truly free and not a product of economic pressure. At the same time, advertisers face the prospect of reaching fewer people with targeted campaigns, which may accelerate a shift toward more contextual, less intrusive forms of marketing.

For Meta, this is both a new challenge and an opportunity. The company must prove that it can align its commercial model with evolving privacy expectations without alienating users or regulators. If it succeeds, the UK could become an example of how global tech platforms and regulators can find common ground. If it fails, the ICO will take a tougher stance and the debate over the fairness of consent-or-pay will only intensify.

In many ways, this moment encapsulates the crossroads at which the digital economy now stands between free services underwritten by personal data and the emerging expectation that individuals should have more meaningful control over how their data is used.

The coming months will show whether Meta’s UK model is a genuine step in that direction, or merely another chapter in the ongoing tug-of-war between big tech, regulators and users.