Facebook, which started as a social network for Harvard in 2004, enlarged from a closed social network to a gigantic internet communication and marketing organization. Currently, Facebook has over 2.8 billion monthly active users, which makes it a major life component.
People can stay connected regardless of their geographic location. Besides undergoing tremendous evolution, Facebook has also transformed into a powerful tool for digital marketing. Businesses of all sizes now use Facebook to reach prospective customers through targeted advertising. They optimize the platform’s extensive data collection capability to tailor their marketing strategies.
It has been the main reason why the content on Facebook feeds has changed so much, with ads now being more important components of the feed.
Facebook Feed Working
The content of what you see on Facebook is given by an advanced algorithm that examines a variety of factors whether it is the most relevant to you or not. Learning this formula is a fundamental step in explaining why ads seem to keep popping up in your feed.
1) The Facebook’s Algorithm evolution
The algorithm of Facebook has undergone quite a few modifications over the years, all the modifications aiming at increasing the engagement of the users and boosting their satisfaction. To begin with, the timeline was merely a display of friends’ posts which were in chronological order. Nevertheless, as the platform grew, the algorithm was updated to give priority to content based on engagement (likes, comments, shares) and relationships (how close you are to a person sharing). The last few years have witnessed the change that has invariably promoted advertisers’ content rather than Facebook which is aiming to increase its revenue through ad placement. This change thus, has seen ads interspersed more often with organic posts which now pose a common sight in your feed.
2) Ad personalization and targeting
Facebook’s ads’ efficacy can be attributed to the fact that it personalizes ads. Through data mining of massive data on users’ behaviour, interests, and demographics, Facebook provides advertisers with the ability to reach their audiences more effectively. Such a targeted approach is based on the pages you liked, post interaction, or the demographic information you offer. This ensures that the ads you see are often related to your interests. It may be good for you to see posts about products or services that you can benefit from, but it can also mean that you are constantly confronted with ads in your feed.
3) Frequency of Viewing Ads
The more you interact with certain types of advertisements by clicking on them, liking them, or even spending time viewing them the more chances are to see similar advertisements in the future. Facebook’s algorithm translates engagement to mean interest, which is why it keeps on showing you what it thinks you like. This mechanism of self-reinforcement implies that once you engage with a particular ad type, Facebook’s algorithm will more likely prioritize similar ads, potentially increasing their frequency in your feed. Though this can create a more personalized browsing experience, it can also cause an ad-dominated feed, especially when the history of your interactions may indicate a broad range of interests.
4) Managing Your Ad Preferences
Fortunately, Facebook integrates several tools that allow users to control what they see depending on their preferences. undefined.
- Ad Preferences: Through this feature, you get to understand why particular ads are shown and can take steps to update your interests. By eliminating the interests, there will be no more importance attached to the ads shown.
- Ad Settings: Here you can limit the use of your data by advertising networks for ad targeting purposes. This would involve choices such as blocking ads related to your partner’s Facebook Product activity, ads based on your activity, and ads that include your social actions.
- Hide Ad Topics: Facebook allows you to hide ads that are connected to specific topics for a particular period. This is an added advantage especially when too many ads about a topic that is not of interest to you, or you don’t want to see are appearing.
- Advertisers and Businesses: This list is not recognizable, but you may see advertisers who have used a list uploaded to Facebook containing your information. Now you can decide to stop seeing ads from these advertisers by yourself.
- Your Information: This part allows us to decide whether marketers can target according to personal information like relationship status, place of work, job title, and education level.
- Ad Experience: You can give feedback on every advertisement you see by clicking on the three dots in the top right corner of the ad. This will help in improving the content, and you will not be served with the same ad in the future.
Why is Your Facebook Feed Full of Ads?
The ads that you see in your Facebook feed are due to several reasons, all of which are essential to Facebook’s business model and the proposition it provides advertisers. Here’s a closer look:
1. Retargeting
Retargeting is an effective ad tool that plays a huge part in the amount of ads you see. It tracks people who are visiting a site and then ads them to Facebook as they surf the web.
2. Sponsored Ads
Another ad of the sponsorship is another common reason why your feed may be full of promotional content. These are posts that businesses pay to boost the visibility of their posts to a wider audience or a demographic of their choice on Facebook. They resemble normal posts, but they are indicated by a “Sponsored” tag. Placement within your feed, detailed targeting options, as well as the fact that sponsored ads are a part of your everyday browsing experience, make them omnipresent.
3. Demographics
Advertisers use demographic information to target their ads to the required audience like age, gender, location, etc. Facebook has an expensive database of its users that allows advertisers to narrow down the audience they wish to view their ads, thus creating a very customized but ad-filled user experience.
4. Interests
Besides the pages you like and the posts you comment on, Facebook keeps a record of every little thing you do on the social network such as the content you engage with, which is also used to build a profile of your interests. The matrix of characteristics is what advertisers use to serve ads with content that should fit your tastes, from hobbies and entertainment to job titles and education levels.
5. Behavior
Behaviour targeting extends beyond your demographics and interests by trying to understand your behaviour on and off Facebook. This includes the one’s way of purchase, the devices used and other online activities. Advertisers are now able to utilize data to show you ads that not only fit your preferences but also your readiness to buy, subscribe or go through the conversion funnel.
How to Stop Ads on Facebook
1. Install an Ad Blocker
Among the most straightforward ways of hiding ads on Facebook is by installing an ad blocker. An ad blocker is a browser extension or application preventing ads from appearing on the websites you visit, including Facebook.
Featured ad blockers to consider: Some of the most popular ad blockers include Adblock Plus, uBlock Origin, and AdGuard. Each of them has different settings so you can pick the one that suits you best.
2. Make Use of a Browser That Blocks Ads
Some web browsers already have ad-blocking functionality built-in or can block ads even more via extensions. Changing the browser to one of these or installing this, would result in a significant reduction of ads that you encounter.
Browsers to consider: Brave and Opera are two browsers that have powerful ad-blocking capabilities and enable a cleaner and more enjoyable browsing experience.
3. Hide Ads
Facebook allows the hiding of ads by clicking the three dots on the top right corner of the ad and then choosing “Hide ad.” This shows Facebook that you don’t like this type of news and don’t want it displayed to you. Facebook will gradually show you fewer ads of this kind.
4. Restrict the Facebook Ads of Certain Kinds
In the ad preferences, you will be able to set the ad type and select the advertisers and topics. This here is helpful especially if you’re always viewing ads from the same source or the ones about that do not interest you.
5. Deactivate Personalized Ads on Facebook
To decrease the relevance of the ads shown (and possibly reduce their overall impact), you can change your advertising settings to disable personalized ads. Navigate to your Facebook settings, click on “Ads” on the left side, and then adjust your ad settings to limit ad personalization based on data from social partners.
6. Report Inappropriate Ads
If you encounter ads that are misleading or violating the advertising policies of Facebook, you can report them by clicking on the three dots in the upper right corner of the ad and selecting “Report ad”. We can expect that the reporting of such ads will enable the platform to improve the ads’ quality and reduce their number.
7. Use Antivirus Software
Some antivirus software has features that prevent ads from popping up and keep your privacy online. Though not a direct solution to managing Facebook ads, this can be a complementary measure, particularly for ads that are malicious or too intrusive.
Conclusion
Although ads are a pivotal element of Facebook, comprehending why your feed is full of ads and what you can do to manage your ad preferences allows you to personalize your surfing experience. By taking the initiative to filter the ads you see and how often you see them, you can make your Facebook feed more fun and less full of ads. Recall that you’re the master of the controls, and can thus create a digital environment that is more in tune with your requirements and preferences.
