Non-Social Facebook Ads Begin Creeping Into The News Feed

As Facebook’s continued quest for revenue continues, the News Feed relevance appears to be declining. Under immense pressure to generate meaningful ad revenue, Facebook has begun sponsoring stories and pages and, most recently, suggesting posts. The key? These new ad units have been intrinsically social — promoting a Facebook post or page. Now InsideFacebook reports that Facebook is testing the placement of traditional non-social ad units in the News Feed.

Traditionally, Facebook ads and News Feed content have been a separation of church and state as ads have always been placed to the right of the social content.  However Facebook told InsideFacebook that:

“We are currently running a small test that makes other ad units eligible to appear in News Feed. This is just a test; we have no further details to share at this time.”

While these ads may appear similar to Sponsored Stories & Pages those units don’t allow for specific ad copy customization. This would allow marketers to treat the unit with the traditional copy testing rather than post-by-post testing. It appears that these ad units wouldn’t display any connection information from friends.

For more information see InsideFacebook.