Starting with a Question: How Long Can “Borrowed Traffic” Last?

In June 2025, three significant news items emerged in quick succession:

• Meta retracted its AI image generation feature “Muse Image,” which utilized publicly posted images on Instagram, just days after its launch due to privacy criticisms.
• The EU pointed out that Meta’s infinite scrolling and autoplay features inadequately assess user health risks, signaling a move towards regulation.
• U.S. Senator Ed Markey introduced an AI regulation bill in the Senate, covering a wide range of issues including environmental impacts of data centers, workplace surveillance, and algorithmic bias.

All of these stories reflect the influence of “forces that restrict the use of technology.”

Many small businesses may dismiss this as “overseas news” or “big company issues.” But hold on a moment. How much does your company’s customer acquisition depend on Instagram and Facebook? If the answer is “more than 50%”, then these three news items are not someone else’s problem.

Every time the rules of the platform change, reach can be halved, and advertising costs can skyrocket. This is the risk of “borrowed traffic.” The current wave of regulations could be the moment when that risk becomes glaringly apparent.

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Meta’s Withdrawal of AI Features—”Convenience” Can Disappear Overnight

The “Muse Image” feature introduced by Meta allowed the use of images posted on public Instagram accounts as training and generation material for AI. Criticism focused on the fact that users could use their own photos for others to generate AI images, leading to its retraction just days after release.

What stands out here is the “speed of withdrawal.”

A giant company like Meta can retract a feature solely due to public pressure. This means that a “usable feature” on the platform can become an “unusable feature” overnight. This is not limited to AI functionalities; the accuracy of ad targeting and the algorithms for reach can also change just as quickly.

In fact, when Meta significantly reduced Facebook ad targeting options in 2024, reports indicated that the average CPA for small businesses increased by 30-50%. For a company spending 1 million yen annually on advertising, it would now cost 1.3 to 1.5 million yen to achieve the same results. This is the true nature of the “cost of platform dependency.”

The withdrawal of Muse Image itself does not directly destroy small businesses’ customer acquisition efforts. However, this incident highlights a structural issue. As long as you are doing business on a platform, the risk of rule changes is always yours to bear.

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EU’s Regulation on Infinite Scrolling—The Premise of “Being Seen Because of Flow” is Crumbling

The EU’s challenge to Meta pointed out that designs like infinite scrolling and autoplay, which are meant to keep users engaged, have insufficient risk assessments. There is a possibility that these features may be restricted or abolished in the future.

What does this mean for small businesses? In short, the premise of the customer acquisition model that relies on “being seen because of the flow” is crumbling.

If infinite scrolling stops, the number of posts users see in their feeds will physically decrease. Your post, which previously appeared at the tenth position after scrolling through 100 posts, will not reach users if they stop scrolling after 20 posts. Organic reach will further decline.

So, should we just compensate with ads? It’s not that simple. If the number of display slots decreases, competition for ad bids will intensify, driving up costs. The CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) for Meta ads has nearly doubled over the past three years, and this regulation could accelerate that trend. A company that previously achieved 500 reaches with a monthly budget of 50,000 yen might only reach 300 with the same budget—this is the reality.

Some might suggest, “Then just create more creative content.” While that’s not wrong, the issue is cost. Hiring a professional for video production can cost between 100,000 to 300,000 yen per video. Even if produced in-house, the labor costs for shooting, editing, and planning can amount to several tens of thousands to over 100,000 yen monthly. For a company with five employees, this is not a trivial investment.

Moreover, that content could become worthless with just one change in the platform’s algorithm. The results of the costs incurred are in a place you cannot control. This is the fundamental problem.

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U.S. Senate AI Regulation Bill—The Cost of Using AI is Rising

Senator Markey’s bill aims for comprehensive regulation of AI. It covers a wide range of issues, including the environmental impact of data centers, AI surveillance in the workplace, algorithmic bias, and copyright concerns.

You might think, “We’re a small company, so it doesn’t concern us.” However, the impact will come indirectly.

For instance, if companies providing AI tools pass compliance costs onto consumers, a tool that used to cost 10,000 yen per month could rise to 20,000 yen. If the accuracy of AI-driven ad distribution is restricted by regulations, the effectiveness of ads will decrease. Companies that have been mass-producing content using tools like ChatGPT may need to reassess their usage due to stricter copyright regulations.

Whether this bill will pass is uncertain, but the direction is clear. The era of using AI “cheaply and freely” is beginning to hit the brakes. The window of opportunity for small businesses to catch up with large corporations using AI may close sooner than expected.

That’s why the answer is to “do what you can while you still can.”

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So, What Should We Do?—Own Your Own Land

To summarize the discussion so far, the structure is simple:

1. You cannot decide the rules of the platform.
2. Every time regulations are introduced, the cost of customer acquisition on the platform rises.
3. The cost of AI tools may also rise in the future.

In other words, the risk of being in a state of “doing business on someone else’s land with borrowed tools” is rapidly increasing.

So what should small businesses do? The answer is to “own your own land.” Specifically, here are four actions:

1. Turn Your Company Website and Blog into a “Customer Acquisition Machine”

As the reach of social media decreases, the value of traffic from search engines will relatively increase. Create a company website using WordPress and publish 4 to 8 articles per month. The initial cost is around 50,000 to 150,000 yen, with monthly operational costs of about 10,000 to 30,000 yen. This will yield a greater return after 12 months than spending 100,000 yen per month on social media ads, as articles remain as assets.

Moreover, you can now use AI to draft articles. The production time per article can be reduced to less than half. It’s a rational move to use AI to “build content assets on your own land” before regulations tighten.

2. Treat Your Email List as the “Strongest Asset”

Email marketing has the highest ROI among all channels. According to a survey by the DMA (Data & Marketing Association), the average ROI for email marketing is $36 for every $1 invested.

Using tools like Mailchimp or Brave, you can start with a monthly fee ranging from free to a few thousand yen. If you have a list of 1,000 emails, you can reach your audience directly regardless of how platform regulations change. This is your “customer database” that cannot be taken away by anyone.

3. Create a Platform for “Branded Searches” with a LINE Official Account

For local small businesses, LINE is the closest channel to daily life. Even with a free monthly plan, you can send 200 messages. Those who register as friends are “people who have made the effort to connect,” so the quality of engagement differs from social media followers.

By simply implementing a system like “100 yen off for LINE registration” during visits, you can accumulate a list of 50 to 100 people per month. In six months, that could total 300 to 600 people. This number will definitely reach more people than organic reach from Instagram posts.

4. Design a Path Where “Social Media is the Entrance, and Your Own Channels are the Goal”

This is not to say to abandon social media. Use social media as a place to “get known” and guide users to your website, email, or LINE. Always include pathways in your social media posts, such as “For more details, click the link in the profile” or “Register on LINE for exclusive information.”

Having 500 people on your email list is more directly tied to sales than having 10,000 followers on social media. Whether you can grasp this sense will be the dividing line in the regulatory era.

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This Week’s Action—Do Just One Thing

You don’t need to do everything at once. This week, just focus on one thing:

• If you don’t have an email list, register for Mailchimp’s free plan and ask 30 existing customers for their email addresses.
• If you don’t have a company website, create just one page on WordPress.
• If you don’t have a LINE official account, set it up today and start informing customers tomorrow.

Platform regulations are not going to stop. Both the EU and the U.S. have no reason to ease their grip on tech companies. This means that the cost of customer acquisition dependent on social media will continue to rise.

Conversely, companies that start creating their “own land” now will establish a stable customer acquisition base while competitors are tossed around by fluctuations in social media.

Large corporations have specialized teams to respond to changes in platforms. Small businesses do not have that. Therefore, small businesses that create systems that do not depend on platforms will win.

Regulations are not a “threat.” They are an opportunity to graduate from “borrowed traffic.”