Facebook to improve 'ad preference' management & thwart adblockers
Facebook announced overnight that it will give users more freedom to control their advertising experience and taking powers away from desktop ad blockers.
Facebook announced the changes in an post, which firstly details that users can now filter out irrelevant ads that disrupt their experience through an update to the 'ad preferences' feature. Users can also see and remove themselves from businesses that have added them to their customer lists.
"With today's announcement, we're building on these efforts by making ad preferences easier to use, so you can stop seeing certain types of ads. If you don't want to see ads about a certain interest like travel or cats, you can remove the interest from your ad preferences," Facebook's post says.
Facebook believes that people use adblockers to stop the most disruptive ads, not the creative and relevant ones. Because Facebook and businesses get their revenue from ads, the company is going to get around adblocking software by displaying ads on Facebook desktop.
"Ads support our mission of giving people the power to share and making the world more open and connected. Rather than paying ad blocking companies to unblock the ads we show — as some of these companies have invited us to do in the past — we're putting control in people's hands with our updated ad preferences and our other advertising controls," the post continues.
Facebook states that it has listened to user feedback to implement the changes, as it hopes to make 'advertising better for everyone'.
For businesses it will be a welcome way to get exposure as the websites becomes a more saturated form of social media. Facebook users might just have to accept that. "Facebook should be applauded for its leadership on preserving a vibrant value exchange with its users. Its decision to respect advertising as an essential ingredient in connecting users worldwide is spot-on, and should be replicated across the free and open Internet," says Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
