Facebook’s ads can sometimes come across rather spammy and annoying, but for the most part Facebook can’t really control what kind of ads their advertisers decide to use. However sometimes these ads can be rather upsetting, such as showing advertisements for alcohol when someone’s a recovering alcoholic, or parenting ads for someone who might have lost their child.
The good news is that Facebook isn’t completely oblivious as to how these ads might be upsetting. A report from Ad Age revealed that the social network is now testing out a feature that will allow users to hide upsetting ads, and that for now alcohol ads and ads regarding parenting are two categories that they’re testing it with right now.
According to Mark Rabkin, VP of core ads at Facebook, “Those are the two most common topics. For families who experience the loss of a child, to continue to see ads about parenting and new baby stuff, that can be really upsetting.” With this new feature, users will basically be able to block a particular ad topic, the first of its kind on Facebook.
Prior to this, users could report ads and also hide ads that they did not think was relevant, but they could never directly block them. We expect that there could be other topics that will be added to the list in the future, but as Rabkin says, for now these are the two most common topics that will be tested out first.
Filed in . Read more about Facebook.