New Ways for Small Businesses to Boost and Avoid Apple Service Fees

Businesses with limited resources have found tremendous value in advertising through boosted posts to find new customers and have been utilizing them for many years. In fact, nearly all boosted post users are small businesses.

To support the millions of small businesses that use boosted posts on Facebook and Instagram, advertisers can now go to Instagram.com and Facebook.com on mobile and desktop to boost their content and avoid a 30% Apple service fee.

The Apple service fee is a result of updates Apple made to the App Store Review Guidelines. Starting later this month, when an advertiser uses the Facebook or Instagram iOS app to Boost a post, they will be billed through Apple, which retains a 30% service fee on the total ad payment, before any applicable taxes. This service fee is retained by Apple, not Meta.

We are required to either comply with Apple’s guidelines, or remove boosted posts from our apps. We do not want to remove the ability to boost posts, as this would hurt small businesses by making the feature less discoverable and potentially deprive them of a valuable way to promote their business.

We are committed to offering businesses flexible and convenient options to help them navigate this change and maximize the results of their ad spend. As part of our efforts to do this, we have invested in alternative ways to boost posts.

Specifically, advertisers can access Facebook.com and Instagram.com on both desktop computers or a mobile web browser to boost their content. When doing this, they will have all the same features as boosting posts from the iOS apps, except now they will avoid the Apple service fee.

What are boosted posts?

Boosted posts are a low-barrier-to-entry advertising product that businesses can use to quickly promote a piece of content without needing to set up a full campaign in Ads Manager. This feature is particularly used by small businesses, who may use boosted posts as their only form of advertising across Facebook and Instagram.

Additional changes to how advertisers boost content in the Facebook and Instagram iOS apps

Another change happening as a result of Apple’s update is that advertisers will need to go through a different payment process when boosting posts through the Facebook and Instagram iOS apps. Unlike the previous experience, where advertisers were charged after their boosted posts ran, businesses on iOS will now be required to pay in advance, and add prepaid funds to their account to draw from to boost a post.

If an advertiser adds these prepaid funds within the Facebook or Instagram iOS app, the Apple service fee will apply. If an advertiser chooses to add prepaid funds from their payment settings using their desktop computers or preferred mobile web browsers, they can then use these funds to boost content from any tool, including from the Instagram or Facebook iOS apps, without incurring fees.

This new payment process, and subsequent Apple service fee, is starting in the US, and additional markets and countries will be subject to this fee later this year. Boosting content from the Facebook.com or Instagram.com websites without the Apple service fee is available to advertisers globally.