Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on September 22, 2026.
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I've been a user of Facebook since the early days- back when it was The Facebook and only accessible to current college students at a handful of universities. Yes, the early, early days.
Naturally, I've always had a strong presence on the app for my many blogs, as Facebook was historically the best social network out there to find new fans, build and reach an audience, and grow a small business (particularly for my local blog thanks to the app's historically great ad location-based targeting tools).
In September 2026, Meta rolled out new subscriptions for professional pages, known as Meta One, which includes finite link shares (which are now heavily limited outright), and more at rates ranging from just a few dollars a month to upwards of $499 per month for unlimited link postings.
But because this came along with restrictions in how many free links accounts were able to post in any given month, I had a decision to make, and that decision was I have dropped my advertising spend on Facebook to $0.
Facebook ads are now no longer a part of my marketing plan and seemingly won't be for the foreseeable future.
What is Meta One?
Meta One is a new subscription tier offered on Facebook and Instagram to offer more services to professional creators. Packages seem to vary in price from what we're hearing, but generally involve roughly four tiers (with prices I'm personally seeing on a page with 163k followers included):
- Essential: The lowest tier plan which comes with a verified badge and impersonation protection at about $12/month.
- This is similar to current verification plans out there, which I do admittedly still pay for on Instagram but am re-evaluating whether to keep it
- Advanced: A higher tier package that includes a relatively low number of clickable links in posts on both Facebook and Instagram, a “Featured in Feed” option on Facebook, follower invites, and one human support case per month to name a few at about $40/month
- Expert: More links in posts on both networks, more support cases, shared access, and more at around $119/month
- Max: The unlimited tier for links on Facebook and a nominal amount on Instagram, as well as unlimited support and case monitoring to name a few at $399/month (although we're hearing others may be seeing $499/month for a similar package, so offered pricing may also vary)
As noted above, the Essential plan doesn't seem much different to me from the current verification plans out there. But once you get into the Advanced tiers and higher, Facebook offers extra perks for subscribers like better placement in feed, the ability to share a nominal number of links per month, auto follower invites for engaged users, impersonation protection, and more.
In some respects, paying for a premium subscription with extra perks can make sense. But since this comes at a natural expense at being able to share links organically as we have been able to for nearly two decades now, well, it certainly feels like a good percentage of that fee is effectively just there to use Facebook outright the way we have for years and years.
But why is Meta rolling all of this out to begin with? Well, Meta's Adam Mosseri has posted stating that “[Meta One] subscriptions let us build things we otherwise couldn't, like features that are too specialised or too costly to bring to everyone, and get them to the people who want them most.”
Far be it from me to speculate what a company with a nearly $2 trillion market cap and multi-billion dollar revenue in 2025 can't afford to build, but here we are. Either way, none of this sits right with me, so I have made what I would argue is the logical move and changed my Facebook ad budget to $0 for the time being.
Why I Am No Longer Advertising on Facebook
Now, before diving into this one more, I want to point out that I have paid for a significant number of ads on Facebook and Instagram over the years. It is not a stretch to say that I've likely had a lifetime ad spend in the multiple five figure range, with recent spending being anywhere from $150-$300/month if not significantly more.
As a small business and a team of one, that is a lot of money to me (that's a few years where I could've maxed my 401k out, just saying), and honestly Meta had historically received the bulk of my advertising budget in any given year since it had a good value proposition.
But the reason I advertised always had one specific goal- to build our following. We were running campaigns for page likes and boosting popular posts to reach a wider audience. Both of these helped encourage engagement where we could invite users who could like our page, who would then organically see our content because they opted-in to see it. You know- normal social network logic.
This change to Meta One, alongside the current Discovery-feed style algorithm that I hate (where most content you as a user see is from accounts you don't follow to begin with), has me sitting here scratching my head. If my organic content is not really reaching my existing followers that I already paid to get to follow me, “good” performing content starts to reach strangers who may or may not like what we do, and I now have to pay for the luxury of posting links to my website outright, what incentive exactly is there for me to pay for advertising at all? (Cue the obligatory mention of Dead Internet Theory here for more.)
No matter what, I'm not really seeing a value proposition here other than thinking it is a cash grab.
So rather than continue to give Meta money, I turned my ad spending off, and I'll take my chances until more data comes out or Meta comes to its senses.
Thanks for the extra funding to my retirement account.
What Would Get Me to Pay Again
So, you may be wondering what would it take to get me to give Meta advertising money again and there are three scenarios where I could see resuming my ad spend in some capacity.
First, the simple one- Meta turns off link posting restrictions on pages outright. That is to say, no subscription requirement necessary and no internal algorithm depressed reach of link-style posts. I would likely resume my normal ad spending if I had the ability to use my page as I always have in the past. Logical, right?
- Actually, if Facebook ditched the Discovery feed nonsense outright and reverted back to what it was like 10 or so years ago with a feed of content from pages you actually follow plus nominal ads, I would probably add an extra zero to my historic ad spending more or less immediately.
Second, if Meta One plan prices come down. Right now, I have no incentive to pay $400-$500/month to get unlimited links and some nominal features like auto invites of fans and priority listings in search. This price is a non-starter to me; however, if a plan came about that had verifications of Instagram/Facebook together, unlimited link postings included on both, and extra reach in-feed for a more reasonable amount, say, $100/month, I may be interested and could easily swap my now former ad spend over 1:1 without concern.
But in this case, some of the third option may also need to be present either way.
Third, if Meta One plans actually produced good results for the categories of featured placements, link posts, auto invites (especially given the bulk invite button has been broken for me for months now), etc. For $400-$500/month, for example, I would need Meta One to reasonably expect enough website traffic and additional reach for the Social Bonus program that my costs are more than covered- it is as simple as that.
So if posting links could get my website say, oh, I don't know, an extra 25,000 pageviews a month reliably (which I reliably achieved in the Facebook of 10 years ago), I'd consider a Max option. But I'm not holding my breath that target is even remotely achievable, and it isn't even in my radar of even considering to test as a what-if, either.
None of this is exciting to me as a blogger in the slightest.
Right now, Meta One feels nothing more than a cash grab to me from a business that has killed most of what once made its social networks great. So I am waving goodbye to giving Facebook any of my money beyond my Instagram verification (which I may turn off, too, if I am feeling particularly spiteful), and that's all there is to it.
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