Facebook has announced it would be taking a hard line against ad blockers, while giving users more control of the ads they are exposed to.
The social media powerhouse is the first of such companies to outright ban tools that prevent ads from appearing on the desktop pages of its 1.7 billion monthly users.
Its approach involves targeting signifiers that can detect which posts are sponsored within an individual’s feed, allowing its desktop site to make such ad content indistinguishable from non-advertising content.
“Disruptive ads are an industry problem, and the rise of ad blockers is a strong signal that people just don’t want to see them,” Andrew Bosworth, vice-president of Facebook’s ads and business platform, said in an interview with The New York Times. “But ad blockers are a really bad solution to that.”
Instead, Facebook plans to give users more control over which brands and companies can reach them by overhauling its ad preferences tool. Users will be able to opt-out of seeing certain types of ads in their feeds, which Facebook said would give it an opportunity to serve more relevant ads.
“We want people to help us do a better job with ads, rather than to fundamentally alter the way the service is rendered,” he said.
While the move marks a bold step for desktop-based ad block prevention, it will not affect ad blockers used on mobile web browsers, which are increasing in popularity. Nor will it affect Facebook’s own mobile apps, which already include native ads that cannot be blocked.
A vast majority of Facebook’s $17.93 billion revenue earned in 2015 came from paid advertising. A study conducted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and ComScore found 17% of Canadians currently use ad blockers.
“Facebook’s primary objective is user experience,” said Tammy Martin, a Newmarket, Ont.-based Facebook advertising consultant. “Their goal is to continue getting visitors to their site on a regular basis, which is why they already limit the number of ads that are generated in the user’s news feeds. They understand the fine balance between keeping end users and advertisers happy.”
Martin added that the ads that users choose not to see equate to savings for advertisers, as they will no longer serve ads to an uninterested audience member.
“Facebook does enable its users to provide feedback on the ads they’re being served, which is very reasonable on their part,” she said. “From an advertising perspective, there is no other medium that allows that type of feedback loop.”
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