Facebook Newsfeed Ads

Facebook will from January 2012 start showing Sponsored Stores in users’ Newsfeeds.

The stories will be marked as sponsored so there is no illusion as to what they are.

On various tech blogs there does seem to be some negative comment about Facebook’s move to do this.

But we really need to look at the bigger picture here, and in my opinion ask these questions

• Will Facebook add so many ads that it ruins the site? I think not.
• Will this be done in a smart way? I’m sure it will.
• This is Facebook’s site and they need to make money, so that’s understandable.

Apparently users will only see one sponsored story per day, so this new feature is hardly intrusive.

Facebook actually had ads in the Newsfeed back in 2007/2008 but did remove them since.

The sponsored stories in the ticker seem to have a much higher CTR and no doubt sponsored stories in the Newsfeed will be even higher again.