Meta, X and Snaochat are all making a push on their premium add-on plans for the Summer, with each offering special discounts for sign-ups over the next month.
Meta’s offering a significant discount for initial sign-ups, with the first month available super cheap, before rising back to its normal levels.
As you can see in this example, posted by Jonah Manzano, Meta’s looking to entice a few more Verified sign-ups through a big discount on the initial few weeks (note: dollars here are in AUD).
X Premium, meanwhile, is offering 30% off its annual subscriptions for its Premium and Premium Plus plans.
While Snapchat is also offering a 50% discount off the price of the first two months of Snapchat+ as well.
Will that help to boost their subscription offerings, and make them a more significant revenue stream for each company?
Maybe, though I wouldn’t bet on it, as most people who would sign-up for each has likely already done so, and there’s not a heap of add-on content that’s sweetened the deal in recent months.
I mean, X is offering expanded access to its latest Grok AI tools, and that could be enticing for some people. Snap is also offering advanced access to new features to enhance the Snap experience.
But none of these is going to become a major revenue driver for any of these companies, with all of these elements only contributing a minor amount, in terms of overall revenue.
Though each is still a significant income stream in itself.
We don’t have exact data, because the platforms generally keep that to themselves, but looking at its performance reports, Meta’s added an extra $358 million to its “Other” income stream on what it was earning in this category when it launched Meta Verified back in Q2 2023.
Using the average price of Meta Verified as a measuring stick ($13), that would suggest that Meta could have sold around 9 million subscriptions to Meta Verified thus far. Which is a lot, to be sure, and a lot of money to be bringing in each month from the offering. But in comparison to the $31.5 billion it generates per quarter from ads, it’s clearly a subsidiary revenue element.
Snapchat+ is now up to 15 million subscribers, which has brought an extra $150 million per quarter into its coffers, and made it the most successful add-on offering of the new three. Though again, it’s still nowhere close to the $1.36 billion overall that Snap brought in for Q1.
Which brings us to X, which has been the most scrutinized and criticized of the three new paid add-on offerings.
That’s because X owner Elon Musk was originally hoping to get hundreds of millions of people to pay for X access, which would then enable him to supplant advertiser dollars, and thus advertiser restrictions on content, as he mapped a way forward for the app.
But it hasn’t exactly worked out that way.
X Premium looks to currently have around 1.5 million paying users, which equates to less than 0.5% of X’s user base. So not close to the 300 million or so subscribers that X was hoping for, though it still seemingly believes that access to its Grok AI chatbot will eventually drive up subscription revenue.
Though the expense of developing xAI has also forced it to increase X Premium prices. And with AI bots available from OpenAI and Meta, I’m not sure it’s ever going to be the lure that Elon and Co. hope.
But maybe, with this new promotional push, each platform can make their subscription add-ons a bigger factor, and get more people at least trying out their offerings.
But overall, the numbers show that subscription options are never going to supplant advertising as the key funding path for social apps.
Which means that Elon’s stuck playing along with advertiser demands, and X is stuck looking to boost its user base to maximize advertiser interest.
And while each offering does provide a valuable additional income stream, none looks set to see any huge increase in its current take-up, unless they really catch on in developing regions.
