Facebook Inc (FB) News Feed Ads That Track Users Could Be Huge Risk

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Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s latest attempt to accrue more revenues certainly won’t win them any “likes” from users. In efforts to get more from advertising, they applied targeted ads to user news feed.

Just last Tuesday, the social media giant made an announcement on Tuesday that they started a test run for advertisers and ad agencies to use retarget ads on the Facebook exchange. This section is called “Page post link ads” and it’s a prime spot for advertisers who want consumers to get to know their product or service.

Facebook Inc (FB) News Feed Ads That Track Users Could Be Huge Risk

The one problem with these ads is that they spy on user’s browsing behavior outside of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) through cookies to ensure the most relevant ads show up on their feeds. Although this is really no different from websites and blogs doing the same with Google Ads, it won’t help the company’s trust with users and this move could end up hurting their bottom line.

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) previously gave advertisers only one spot to place their ads in: the right sidebar. Unfortunately, it’s pretty easy to ignore the small ads displayed in that section; now Facebook is giving advertisers a chance to display their ads in a can’t miss news feed spot.

Rebecca Lieb, a digital advertising analyst from Altimeter group said, “It’s going to be interesting to see if consumers balk at this. You looked at that laptop. You looked at that purse. You looked at those shoes. And there they are in your News Feed. There are still plenty of consumers who don’t understand how this works and might find this a little jarring … not that it hasn’t happened to them before, but because it happens in their Facebook News Feed.”

Bigger ads with better placement will provide Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) with the immediate results they are looking for. Whether this drives the site’s regular users or not will remain to be seen.

[via: CNET]

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