Facebook Launches Ads In The News Feed

I remember a couple of years ago when people wondered if Facebook were ever actually going to make money, but the last 12 months have shown that there’s no doubt. Today sees them start rolling out the most aggressive part of their monetization strategy to date with the launch of new sponsored stories within the news feed.

We’ve known that this has been coming for some time with most of the online world are saying it’s a step too far, but what will the end users think of this latest push to monetize the site from Facebook? I’m not sure most people will even notice because Facebook have been as subtle as possible, and the only hint that it could be an advert is the tiny word “featured” at the bottom of each post. The news feed was always thought of as sacred but that all changes today.

Ads Do Come With Conditions

Although the ads are not very clearly marked and they are clearly aimed at blending in with your other news feed content, they do come with some conditions. You’ll only ever see one of these per day (lets see how long that lasts) and you will only ever see ads for pages that you have already liked meaning that random irrelevant content should never feature in your news feed.

Are Facebook Going Too Far?

When I log in to Facebook and see the screen below, it just feels so cluttered to me know. There are ads wedged into every single part of the site including the sidebar, ticker, news feed and homepage. It is, of course, a free service and they have to support their business model, but it has got to the point where it is now just way too busy and crowded as a site. Nobody knows if this is the end of Facebook ads either or if they have yet more units and ad sizes planned?