Digital Marketing —
Digital VAT: Your Meta Ads and Google Ads Budgets Cost 20% More Since This Summer
How to adjust your strategy without losing leads
Since July 2026, Morocco’s digital VAT reform has been concretely applied to advertising purchases on Meta, Google, and TikTok, pushing the real invoice up by 20% compared with what Moroccan advertisers paid before. For a real estate developer or an industrial client running a tight media budget, this is not a fiscal footnote — it is a direct hit on cost per lead. DARE Communication asked its COO, Aahd Lkandouchi, how to absorb this extra cost without cutting lead volume.
Effective date: June 11, 2026, when the Moroccan Tax Authority (DGI) launched its online teleservice, with concrete effects on advertising invoices starting in July 2026.
What’s changing, in plain terms
The math is simple: a 10,000 MAD per month Meta Ads budget that used to generate, say, 300 leads at 33 DH each now costs 12,000 MAD for the same volume — or stays at 10,000 MAD but mechanically produces fewer leads if the budget is not adjusted upward. On a real estate account where cost per lead is the metric that justifies everything else — the contract, the renewal, the client’s trust — this +20% is not a minor detail.
What does this actually change in how an ad account is managed?
It changes the budget conversation we need to have with every client, right now, not in three months. Either the client accepts increasing their spend by 20% to keep the same lead volume, or we have to find efficiency elsewhere — better targeting, better creative, a better landing page — so the final cost per lead stays sustainable despite the higher media bill. We can’t afford an average campaign anymore: every dirham now counts 20% more than before.
Aahd Lkandouchi, COO, DARE Communication
How is DARE Coms planning to absorb this extra cost without hurting performance?
Three levers, and we don’t rely on just one. First: tighter targeting — less spread, more budget on the audiences that actually convert, which we were already doing but are now pushing further. Second: the landing page — a conversion rate that goes from 8% to 12% offsets a good chunk of the increase, without touching the media budget at all. Third: refreshing creative more often, because an ad that’s fatigued costs more per click, and that shows even more now that every click is already 20% more expensive than before.
Aahd Lkandouchi, COO, DARE Communication
Should ad budgets be cut while waiting for things to settle?
No, that’s the classic mistake. Cutting the budget now means cutting the data volume the algorithm uses to optimize — so you end up paying more AND getting worse results. The right move is to adjust the budget upward where cost per lead still justifies it, and only cut the campaigns that were already borderline before the reform. On our case study — over 340 leads at 34 DH — the goal now is to stay in that cost-per-lead range despite the increase, not sacrifice it because the media bill went up.
Aahd Lkandouchi, COO, DARE Communication
FAQ
How much has digital VAT increased the cost of Meta and Google advertising in Morocco?
The real invoice for advertising purchases on these platforms has increased by 20% since summer 2026, following the concrete application of Morocco’s digital VAT reform to advertising invoices starting in July 2026 and the DGI teleservice launch on June 11, 2026.
Should you increase your ad budget to offset this increase?
In most cases, yes, if the goal is to maintain the same lead volume. The alternative is to gain efficiency — more precise targeting, a better landing page, and more frequently refreshed creative — to absorb part of the increase without changing the budget.
Is cutting the ad budget a good response to this cost increase?
No. It is generally counterproductive: a reduced budget limits the data available to the platforms’ algorithms for optimization, further worsening cost per lead on top of the VAT-related increase.