Meta To Show Marketplace Ads From Rival Ad Providers

Meta Platforms have opened up its Marketplace to show adverts from eligible third-party ad providers, after a huge fine from the European Commission.

It was in November 2024 when Meta had been stung with a massive antitrust fine from the European Commission, over its online classified ads service known as Facebook Marketplace.

The European Union’s antitrust and competition regulator had fined Meta Platforms €797.7m (£663 million or $843 million).

Facebook Marketplace Partner Program

The Commission had alleged Meta breached EU antitrust rules by tying Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook, and by imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers.

It was the first time the European Union itself has imposed a fine on Meta for breaches of the bloc’s competition law.

Meta is currently appealing against the fine, but in an updated response this week, it confirmed that “in response to the European Commission’s decision on Facebook Marketplace, we are launching the Facebook Marketplace Partner Program to enable eligible third-party partners to distribute listings on Facebook Marketplace to users in the European Economic Area.”

Last month Meta had launched a test in Germany, France, and the US that enabled buyers to browse listings from eBay directly on Facebook Marketplace while completing their transaction on eBay.

But now Meta said its “new program will mean that third-party partners (specifically, online classified ad service providers as defined in the European Commission’s decision) will be able to list their consumer-to-consumer inventory on Facebook Marketplace.”

“That inventory will appear side by side with other third-party inventory and Facebook user listings, opening up access to a new distribution channel for their platforms and sellers, and a broader set of consumers to tap into,” it said.

“Distribution of third-party partner listings on Facebook Marketplace will encourage Facebook users to discover and purchase new content and products on the partners’ websites,” Meta said.

“This new program is another step in our efforts to quickly and constructively build a solution to respond to the European Commission’s decision on Facebook Marketplace,” Meta stated.

Frustration with Europe

It is clear that Meta is becoming increasingly frustrated with the regulatory regime in Europe, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently that the EU decision “serves as another example of the EU directly targeting US companies in a manner that is tantamount to a tariff regime.”

In June 2024 Meta announced would delay the launch of its AI tools in Europe after a privacy group complained about its plans to use extensive public user data to train the AI models without first obtaining user consent.

The following month Meta stated it would withhold its multimodal Llama AI model from the European Union, citing concerns about its regulatory environment

In October 2024 EU’s highest court ruled that Meta must minimise the data on users that it uses for personalised advertising.