Is Facebook thinking about injecting ads directly into your news feed?

Ads on websites when appropriately placed and when relevant are ideal. In fact relevant and well-placed ads makes me want to click them to find out more. But when you encounter websites that supposedly show ads that are “relevant” or are littered with huge banners and pop-ups, the first thing you want to do is click the huge “X” to close it. While Facebook started off being resistant to the idea of ads on its website, it looks like they may be changing their tune pretty soon.

Facebook ads are currently placed on the sidebar of its website which makes it non-intrusive and at times can be relevant, but it appears that they may now be considering injecting ads directly into your news feed. Yes you read that right, the same feed where you can read about your friend’s status updates and check out uploaded photos may soon be littered with ads.

According to Wall Street Journal’s Shayndi Rice and Emily Steele:

“While advertisers have created online campaigns with the intention that consumers would share their messages in the News Feed, Facebook’s algorithms don’t display every piece of content that is shared, limiting the impact of the campaigns, said Ian Schafer, chief executive of New York-based digital marketing firm Deep Focus. “It’s wasted potential,” he said.”

Given the huge deal that everyone made when Google+ was still rolling out invites, it seemed for just a brief moment that Facebook users may start to jump aboard a brand new shiny ship, and if these news feed injected ads were to be put into effect it would not be surprising to start seeing users leave Facebook and use Google+ exclusively.

While we have no objections with companies trying to make a profit, practices that directly intrude upon the user’s experience just does not seem like the smartest move. What do you guys think?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: ads, Facebook, Google, social networks