Facebook is to allow advertisers to buy space in the social network’s main news feed, rather than just on the right hand column of the main page.
Beginning this month, Facebook ads will now appear within your primary news feed as well, emerging sporadically between other, more legitimate posts from friends.
The company said: “Our goal is to do this thoughtfully and slowly. We hope to show people no more than one Sponsored Story in their news feeds per day and the story will be clearly labelled as sponsored.”
These ads, called ‘Sponsored Stories’, will be generated by the actions of others on a user’s friends list.
The company is saying the posts will not appear more than once per day and will be clearly marked as “sponsored,” but consumers will not have the option to opt out of all sponsored stories.
They can, however, remove individual posts from their news feeds.
Despite the discontent expressed by some users, the news of sponsored stories in the news feed will likely be well received among companies and brands looking for another social media mechanism for engaging with consumers.
Just a few months ago, Twitter added sponsored advertising to its user’s timelines. Though the move sparked some initial uproar, most of the chatter has died down as users have become accustomed to the ads. One might assume the overall consumer reaction to Facebook’s sponsored stories in the news feed will be similar.