Facebook Advertisement in News Feed

In the beginning of the new year, 2012, there will be some changes to come for the popular social networking website, Facebook. Paid advertisements will now be mixed in with status updates that are shown by friend and families. This can be an invasion to people who enjoy the website for the social activity and not for viewing advertisements, according to FT.com.

Advertisements are typically displayed on the ad column on the Facebook page. However, changes will be made so that advertisers can now pay more money to have their advertisements displayed directly in the news feed. This will help companies reach target audiences and receive more customers because just about everyone with a Facebook page checks through their status updates on a regulr basis. However, while it might do some good, it is believed that there is a possibility that the entire situation will alienate specific users. There are a lot of Facebook users who use the site and prefer it without all of those extra advertisements. Dealing with such advertisements can be quite frustrating to people who absolutely hate viewing advertisements.

An analyst for the Altimeter group, Rebecca Lieb, says, “ Facebook is under a lot of pressure to make money right now.” Lieb also says, “Users have to understand the value exchange of getting what you pay for.” During the end of 2006, Facebook displayed some paid advertisements in the news feed but ending up removing these advertisements by 2008 because it seemed to annoy users and was considered to be quite disruptive.

With the new year, there will be a new approach. The advertisements will feature sponsored stories which will use some of the information a user shares, such as certain programs and products that an individual likes, and then uses an advertisements based on things that actual users will enjoy and will be likely to buy or try in the future. Facebook plans to be careful when it comes to adding these advertisements into the news feed because the social networking website does not want to lose users over such advertisements.

Facebook says, “Our goal is to do this thoughtfully and slowly.” They also says, “We hope to show people no more than one Sponsored Story in their news feeds per day and the story will be clearly labeled as sponsored.”

However, while Facebook plans to be cautious, there are some users, especially privacy advocates, who believe that Facebook is not creating a safe and secure environment for its users and that they are using their social networking website for commercial gain, as a way of finding out what certain people like and targeting them with advertisements that relate to those specific things.

Lieb says that advertisers also have concerns about having their advertisements displayed on the news feed as well. For example, sponsored stories will appear after a user has made comments on specific brands. If a user made a negative comment on a certain brand, they might still see a sponsored story for that brand and this would defeat the purpose as the advertisement would not be targeting the people who actually like the product.