Businesses relying heavily on paid social advertising are being warned to diversify how they attract customers as new restrictions on young people’s social media use highlight how quickly access to an online audience can change.
The UK government has announced plans to prevent social media platforms from offering their services to children under 16, with the new rules expected to come into force from spring 2027.
Further protections are also planned for 16 and 17-year-olds, including personalised recommender feeds being switched off by default, affecting the content and advertising young people are served online.
While the immediate impact will be felt by social media platforms and businesses marketing to younger audiences, marketing expert Thomas Phillips, founder of DTC SEO Agency, says there is a much bigger lesson for businesses of all sizes.
He warns that brands have become increasingly dependent on platforms such as Meta and
TikTok to generate demand, despite having little control over who those platforms allow them to reach.
“Businesses shouldn’t look at these changes and assume they’re irrelevant simply because they don’t market to teenagers.
The bigger issue is how quickly the rules around reaching an audience can change.
A business can spend years building a successful acquisition strategy around Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, but ultimately the platform controls the audience. They decide what targeting is available, what advertisers can do and how much it costs to reach those people.
One policy or regulatory change can suddenly make part of that audience much harder to reach.”
You’re renting access to your customers
Paid social advertising has become central to the growth strategies of many ecommerce businesses, allowing brands to put products directly in front of consumers based on their interests, demographics and online behaviour.
Phillips says paid advertising remains an important marketing channel, but businesses become vulnerable when too much of their growth depends on continued access to a single platform.
“The easiest way to think about paid social is that you’re renting access to an audience.
While you’re paying and the platform allows you to target those people, it can be an incredibly effective way of growing a business.
But you don’t own that relationship. If targeting rules change, advertising costs rise or regulations restrict who can be reached, your business has to adapt to somebody else’s decision.
That becomes a serious commercial risk when one platform is responsible for a large percentage of your new customers.”
Phillips says businesses should consider what would happen if their most successful paid acquisition channel suddenly became significantly more expensive or restrictive.
“Every business that spends heavily on paid social should ask itself one question: if this platform changed its rules tomorrow, where would our next customer come from?
If there isn’t a clear answer, the business is too dependent on that channel.”
The difference between pushing an advert and being found
One of the ways businesses can reduce that reliance is by investing more heavily in channels that capture existing customer demand, including organic search.
Phillips says this is where the difference between “push” and “pull” marketing becomes increasingly important.
“Paid social is predominantly push marketing. You’re identifying somebody who fits your target audience and putting your product in front of them.
Search works differently. The customer comes to you.
Someone searching Google for a product, recommendation, comparison or answer has already demonstrated intent. The demand exists before the business appears.
Your job is to make sure you’re the company they find when they’re looking.”
For ecommerce brands in particular, this can mean appearing for searches throughout the buying journey, from consumers researching a problem to those actively comparing products or looking to make a purchase.
“There’s a big difference between interrupting somebody’s feed with a product and being there when they’ve actively gone looking for it.
Both have value, but businesses need both.
If your entire marketing strategy relies on repeatedly paying platforms to put your brand in front of people, you’re constantly having to buy that attention.”
Marketing diversification is becoming a business necessity
Phillips says businesses should not respond by simply moving their entire marketing budget from paid advertising into SEO.
Instead, he argues that the lesson from increasing platform regulation is the need to create several independent routes through which customers can discover and return to a brand.
That can include organic search, paid media, email marketing, direct traffic, digital PR, social communities and increasing the number of consumers searching directly for the brand.
“Diversification doesn’t mean abandoning paid social. Meta and TikTok can still be incredibly effective marketing channels.
It means making sure they aren’t your only effective marketing channels.
The healthiest businesses aren’t relying on one algorithm, one advertising account or one platform to keep sending them customers.”
Businesses should build assets they have greater control over
Phillips says the changing regulatory environment should encourage brands to put more value on marketing assets and audiences they have greater control over.
“Your website is an asset. Your email database is an asset. The content you’ve created is an asset. The reputation you’ve built through PR is an asset. People knowing your brand well enough to search for it directly is an asset.
Those things don’t make a business immune to changes in Google, social media or consumer behaviour, but together they make it much less exposed to one company changing the rules.”
He says this is particularly important for businesses that have experienced rapid growth through paid social and may not yet have invested as heavily in other acquisition channels.
“A business can have brilliant Meta campaigns, a strong return on ad spend and growing revenue while still having a major weakness in its marketing strategy.
If most of that growth disappears the moment the advertising stops, you’re not building enough demand elsewhere.
Businesses should be using the success of paid campaigns to help build their brand, organic visibility and owned audiences at the same time.”
The restrictions may not affect your customers today, but the next ones could
Phillips says the biggest mistake businesses could make is dismissing the latest restrictions because their own target audience falls outside the affected age groups.
“The important thing isn’t necessarily who is affected by this particular change.
It’s what it tells businesses about where digital marketing is heading.
Governments are looking much more closely at privacy, targeting, algorithms and how platforms influence their users. Platforms themselves are constantly changing their advertising products and policies.
The brands that understand that and diversify now won’t have to panic every time another platform changes its rules.”
About Thomas Phillips
Thomas Phillips is a marketing expert and founder of DTC SEO Agency, which specialises in helping direct-to-consumer and ecommerce brands increase their online visibility and grow customer acquisition through organic search.