Recently, the social media world exploded with backlash against Instagram for their updated Terms of Service. What were the changes that caused people to angrily mash their keyboards in a fit of Twitter-rage? They introduced a provision to use the public’s photos in ads without compensation, permission, or even notice to the people who posted them.

They’ve since retracted those updates

That got us thinking: What if social media channels didn’t advertise at all? What if they replaced all of the money that they received from brands to appear in our newsfeeds with fees that they charged their users to keep their sites entirely ad free?

We took a look at the reported revenue figures from 4 of the biggest platforms, as well as their growth targets and number of users to determine just how much users would have to pay per year to not only maintain their revenue figures, but continue their growth projections. The prices were surprisingly low.

Business in Vancouver published our results in an article titled: How Much Would It Cost To Use Facebook Ad Free

All of our revenue, user and growth figures are based on studies posted by Emarketer.com