Meta Platforms said it will apply advertising location fees to advertisers to offset costs related to digital service tax in Europe.
According to the announcement on the company's website, this fee ranges from 2% - 5% and will start to apply from July 1, 2026.
The new fee will apply to image and video advertising on Meta platforms, including live messaging campaigns on WhatsApp and marketing activities using advertising combined with messaging.
Meta said that the fee is calculated based on the location of the advertising viewer, rather than the location of the advertising business's headquarters.
According to the company, this fee is to compensate for digital service tax and similar taxes applied by governments to global technology corporations.
Previously, Meta paid for these additional costs itself. The new changes are part of the company's efforts to adapt to the changing legal environment and to industry standards," Meta said in a blog post.
This decision makes Meta the next major technology corporation to transfer part of its tax costs to advertising customers.
Previously, other major technology companies such as Alphabet - the parent company of Google and Amazon - also applied similar surcharges to advertising in Europe.
In recent years, many European countries have implemented digital service tax to tax global technology corporations, which earn large profits from online activities but are said to pay low taxes in local markets.
These taxes are usually applied to revenue from online advertising, digital platform services, and user data.
It is believed that technology corporations shifting tax costs to advertising customers may increase online advertising costs, especially for businesses that are using social media platforms to reach consumers in Europe.
However, technology companies believe that this is a necessary step in the context of increasingly tighter regulations and tax policies for the digital economy in many countries.
