Facebook is taking the fight to ad blockers with new tech that blends organic content and HTML for its ads on desktop. The social media giant claims that the move is designed to deliver an improved experience for users and publishers and has also introduced new controls for ad targeting and Custom Audience customer lists.
Facebook recently commissioned research that found that the estimated 200 million people across the globe who use ad blockers cite reasons such as the disruptive nature of ads, their impact on load times, and security for installing them. Facebook is hopeful that their new approach will go some way to alleviating these concerns.
“For the past few years at Facebook we’ve worked to better understand people’s concerns with online ads,” Facebook Ads & Business Platform VP Andrew Bosworth said in a blog post. “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. People also want to have control over the kinds of ads they see.”
While Facebook admits that “bad ads” can have a detrimental impact on user experience, it says that faster, secure and non-interruptive content ads that complement rather than detract can be hugely beneficial to publishers, services and platforms and help the global community.
While it’s unlikely that Facebook users will be happy to see these ads bypassing ad blockers, they will now be able to navigate to Ad Preferences to prevent ads from appearing for certain interests, such as travel or sport. There will also be tools to remove themselves from an organisation’s customer lists in order to give them more control of their ad experience.
Facebook believes that the new approach is better than paying what it considers a ransom to ad blocking companies to unlock ads. It concluded by saying that it would continue to listen to feedback from users about the new changes to improve advertising for everyone.
