Facebook has announced to adopt a new ad model, while also improving upon ad preferences offered to users. Since the social media platform is a free service, it understandably relies on advertising revenue to an extent. Facebook Ads & Business Platform VP, Andrew Bosworth, pointed to journalistic and other legitimate websites that rely on ad-blocking revenue which are unfairly penalized with bad ads. As a result, the social media giant has tried to understand the kind of advertisement users will not mind seeing, and has decided to adopt native ads to bypass ad blockers.’
Facebook executive wrote: “What we’ve heard is that people don’t like to see ads that are irrelevant to them or that disrupt or break their experience. He added: “People also want to have control over the kinds of ads they see.” The social media titan has subsequently improved its ad preferences segment to help users determine the category of ads they would like to see. Users can avoid seeing ads from businesses that are marketing to them directly, and can instead choose their own interests. Effectively, users might be able to get travel-based ads, or be informed of their favorite band’s next tour destination.
More importantly, Facebook has addressed ad blocking to provide relevant ads to users while discouraging ad blocking behavior. According to the company, people mainly utilize ad-blocking software to avoid disruptive and annoying ads. Facebook claims that it is providing users with more powerful controls to help eliminate such ads, and will hence show ads even to users who currently employ ad-blockers.
The social media giant justified its decision pointing out that even ad-blocking companies show annoying ads because from companies which have paid them to do so. Facebook claims that this business model is not something it can get behind, and it has chosen against paying ad blocking companies to whitelist its ads. The social media juggernaut will instead render the ad blocking software redundant by bypassing them, which raises interesting questions for websites in general. If all websites can introduce native ads to bypass ad blocking software, it might encourage ad-blocking companies to come up with a new way to prevent the new ad format.
As pointed out by the Wall Street Journal, the Interactive Advertising Bureau posted stats revealing that 26% of desktop users in the US utilize ad blockers. Facebook, however, gets 84% of its ad revenue from mobile devices. This shows that its motivation is to serve proper ads instead of removing them altogether.
The social platform does have a point in this case, and its announcement itself admitted that we have not yet seen the kind of ads that Facebook wants to promote. It would indeed be useful if ads can let users know when the next football match is on, or provide the best flight rates for traveling between cities. For the most part, advertisements have not really lived up to the billing (pun intended). It will be interesting to see if Facebook’s newly-enforced changes usher in an age of better ads. It will also be interesting to see if ad-blocking companies can find a way around Facebook’s new native ads.