For years, social media has worked on a simple principle: people get access to a free service if they agree to put up with personalised adverts.
However, a mix of privacy-oriented laws and a capricious advertising market has ushered in a change.
Now, almost every social media platform lets you pay for extra perks, normally in the form of a subscription. These benefits can range from a coveted verification badge to increased visibility for your posts.
Sensing a trend, TikTok is the latest social media giant to test the subscription waters. The company has confirmed that it is trialing a new offering that lets users pay a monthly fee to ditch adverts. The subscription was first discovered in the app’s internal files by tech news site Android Authority.
For now, the test is limited to one market, which TikTok declined to reveal, though it did confirm that it isn’t the UK or US.
“We regularly experiment with a variety of features and tests to gather feedback and learn from our community, and some of the tests that we experiment with don’t always end up as final products,” a TikTok spokesperson told the Standard.
The initial report claimed the ad-free subscription would cost $5 (£4.14) per month. Much like its rivals, TikTok currently tracks your activity on its app to serve you personalised adverts. This is the main way the company makes money.
Unlike on other social media platforms, these ads can be more difficult to discern on TikTok as they appear just like other vertical videos on the service. The company has also encouraged brands to work with creators to make ads seem even more natural. “Don’t make ads, make TikToks,” it tells advertisers.
As such, an ad-free subscription could appeal to those who think sponsored content is an eyesore. Privacy-minded users may also be drawn to it. On the other hand, paying a monthly fee will be hard to justify for those who are happy to scroll past ads.
Beyond its main video feeds, the app is also introducing adverts to its search results. More broadly, TikTok is trying to get users to purchase the products they see in clips directly from it.
In recent months, the platform has found itself as the last major holdout from subscriptions among its social media peers.
Twitter set the trend with its Blue subscription in 2021, which Elon Musk has aggressively implemented since acquiring the company last October. In fact, under Musk’s leadership the platform (now known as X) may even charge all users a fee to access the site - an unprecedented move in the world of social media.
Meanwhile, Snap has quietly amassed over 4 million subscribers for Snapchat Plus. For £4 per month, the app’s voracious users can get exclusive features like custom app themes, icons and badges.
More recently, Meta launched a paid verification program for Instagram and Facebook, and is planning a similar offering for businesses on WhatsApp. It is also said to be mulling its own ad-free subscription in the EU. The move is aimed at appeasing the bloc’s regulators, who want Meta to get approval before using user data to show tailored adverts.
