Continued from P1

These business plans are being tested in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Thailand and Bangladesh first. Importantly, none of this replaces the existing Meta Verified subscription.

According the experts, subscriptions could bring in $20 billion of high-margin revenue annually by 2030. Deutsche Bank notes subscriptions could deliver as much as $15.6 billion of additional revenue next year.

According to company data, 97.6% of Meta’s revenue last year came from advertising, an alarming sign of the lack of progress it’s made in growing beyond its core business in the last two decades since its founding.

In contrast, Google, a company also built on the back of ads, had more non-ad revenue a decade ago than Meta had last year. That probably explains Zuckerberg’s sudden urgency more than anything else.

In the meantime, users don’t seem too enthused by the premium offerings that are more like a pay-to-play bet at the moment. While it’s still early days, features like profile customisation, story rewatch counts, secret story viewing, and more chat pins are unlikely to garner huge interest beyond power users and influencers.