I want to start out by saying that I am not opposed to Facebook ads. They are a legitimate way for Facebook to sustain a network, and run a profitable business. That being said, Facebook has gone hog wild with their Facebook ads recently.
I apologize if this is not 100% recognizable. The graphic above is my Facebook wall. I had to actually zoom out the browser in order to fit all of the ads in one screen shot.Even with that, I still missed two more ads at the bottom of the page.
That means Facebook now has on average nine Facebook ads below the fold. That means when you open a website anything that you see immediately is above the fold. Anything below the fold is not immediately viewable unless you scroll down. The reason this is important in digital advertising is that below the fold ads do not fare as well.
This is not really a smart move for Facebook. All they are doing is crowding up their entire site with less than average results. For what? A sub par user experience. They are not helping people by placing ads in between wall comments.
Wherever you look on the site you see ads now. That is the first sign that a company has lost site of what their website was there for. If the initial vision of Facebook was a social application, is the current vision one the largest classified ads section in the world?
Every site needs to monetize them self. This is critical for a site to actually maintain itself. That being said, you have to keep a balance to your site. Facebook is taking a huge step out of whack by underrating it’s users abilities to move elsewhere.
All Facebook needs to do is tone down their Facebook ads a little more. Give people the chance to click them on their own. Instead, with the current method you are more likely to have accidental clicks from Facebook users and unhappy clients, because of the lower click through rates.
That leads me to a final thought on this matter. Is Facebook at the point of saturation with their current sales strategy? Think about it. People are talking about how Facebook subscriptions are decreasing every month.
Out of the 2 billion people online right now, 700 million of them are already on Facebook. Is the only way for them to increase their revenue to douse us with Facebook ads until the flames of Facebook flicker like a match at the end of it’s stick?
Either way, I see no good coming from the way Facebook ads are being used right now. This is seems to be an indication of trouble at the social networking behemoth. Either way, I see Facebook ads everywhere.
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Hi Andy,
Wow, you raise a very interesting point. We could be seeing the turning point. Display advertising is so rampant these days that I don’t even “see” most of it. As people develop more efficient ad “blinders”, sites serve up more ads to get their attention and ultimately, the ads become completely ineffectual. A vicious cycle indeed.
Your comment about declining users for FB is even more interesting when it turns out it is the older markets that are seeing the decline. Facebook is certainly an 800lb gorilla in the advertising business, but so was MySpace at one point. I don’t have the timelines in front of me, but do you know the span from birth to death for MySpace, and how does that timespan compare to what we are seeing with FaceBook? Is there a relatively fixed amount of time for the voyeuristic shine to tarnish?
As we see the US membership decline and other countries explode with fresh access to FaceBook it will be interesting to see which countries have the shortest attention span.
The amount of targeted information that Facebook has is incredibly valuable to marketers, just a quick amble through their ad tool will show you that. The content offering is more of a mixed bag. Your screen grab shows a favor to banner ads (though very personalized) and away from vacation brag photos/aggregated twitter posts.
To keep the ball rolling more people need to share more of themselves on FB. This is going to be more difficult as kids turn into adults and realize that keg stand photos are not great for employment reputation. Without that type of content shenanigans, what is the huge draw for new users? The rest of the stuff is out there someplace else, probably with less ads.
Ethan,
I agree with you that it is interesting how the dynamics of Facebook will change with an older population shift and new countries in the mix. Maybe attention spans on Facebook will be a great study to understand how people think.
In regards to the ad tools. They are amazing for researching demographic information.
Andy
Hi Andy,
I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t see that on my own FB pages. I just clicked on my news feed, my personal profile page, and my “like” page, and don’t get all those ads. Maybe I have an older version or something?
But if my FB pages looked like yours above, I wouldn’t like it either.
By the way, you have a way with words!
Pastor,
I think I figured out what happened. Will have a post out on this by the end of the day.
Andy
Do you have facetheme or pagerage installed? They are apps that add additional ads to your FB page. I believe facebook on has the ads on the right side of the page. Any other ads are added by other apps.
Andre,
I do not have either app added.
Andy
I really enjoyed your post . I will appreciate on half of the social media face book. I agree what you commented on face book regarding advisement. A social media advertise itself and itself.
Sathish,
Thanks! Glad that I am not alone here.
Andy
OMG, I just had this happen today, and not just to my personal, but to my clients’ business pages which is really shocking because some of the ads are completely competitive with my clients and there they are, front on center in the middle of their wall posts. This is UGLY. Have you figured out how to turn it off at all? I’m ready to close down all of my pages right NOW.
Gingerlise,
Do NOT shut down your pages.
It turned out for me to actually be a plugin that was completely un-related to Facebook. I think it was either something related to Greasemonkey or the Facebook add all friends plugin. Have you added any firefox plugins lately?
Either way, go to bottom of the ad on Facebook. You will see who is sponsoring the ad. Right click there and it will take you to the company who sponsors the ads. More than likely this is local to just your computer.
Let me know if you need some additional help.
Andy
HOW DO YOU REMOVE THEM
There are some apps that you might be able to find to remove ads, but unfortunately you will probably not be able to remove all ads, because it is a part of Facebook.