It is recognized herein that current approaches to traffic steering in M2M systems lack capabilities, particularly with respect to traversing value added services in an operator's network. As described herein, nodes or apparatuses at a machine-to-machine (M2M) service layer can leverage value added services that are deployed in an operator's network. The M2M service layer may add metadata to downlink traffic so that the metadata can be used to assist with steering and processing data in the operator's value added services (VASs) network. By of example, the M2M service layer can use a control plane interface to push polices into a network operator's VASs network, and to allow functions in the VASs network to extract information from the M2M service layer.