Facebook Provides Advertisers More Safety Controls In The News Feed

Meta formerly known as Facebook is enabling brands with more control over the placement of their ads in the NewsFeed.  In a blog post, it said,

“We’re introducing a number of controls designed to give people and businesses the ability to tailor their News Feed experience.”

New News Feed Controls Added For Advertisers

As part of its NewsFeed updates, the company unveiled a brand suitability verification tool for advertisers. Additionally, it expanded the topic exclusion controls to a limited number of advertisers that advertise in English. 

The controls will be in the “Ads Preferences“ settings tab, which will allow advertisers to select a topic to help define the way ads appear on Facebook, including in News Feed. Advertisers can select three topic categories – News and Politics, Social Issues, and Crime & Tragedy. Advertisers who have selected one or more topics will not see their ads in the News Feed of people with recent engagements on those topics. 

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In early testing, Meta found that advertisers who excluded the News and Politics categories were able to avoid adjacency 94% of the time. Tragedies and conflicts (99%) and debated social issues (95%) saw similar results. The company said,

“From our conversations with the industry, we know that this solution may not solve the needs of every advertiser and that some advertisers are looking for content-level granularity.”

With this product, Meta intends to bridge the gap between what they offer today and hope to offer in the future – content-based controls. It is exploring and testing a new content-based suitability control that will be designed to address concerns advertisers have about their ads appearing in Facebook and Instagram feeds next to specific topics based on their preferences.

“We aim to design our exploration in line with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) Suitability Framework.”

According to the blog post, Meta expects to launch a new control in 2022 and to start updating them in Q1.

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Third-Party Collaboration For Placement Verification 

Facebook plans to work with third-party brand safety partners before year-end to “develop a solution to verify whether content adjacent to an ad in News Feed aligns with a brand’s suitability preferences.” 

New And Customized News Feed Controls For Users

Meta allows users to have more control over what shows up in NewsFeeds, allowing them to minimize the content that they see from friends, relatives, groups, and pages. Also, using the unfollow, snooze, reconnect and disconnect buttons will be easier. Eventually, Meta plans to test the features globally on a small percentage of users. 

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