Why You Will Hate Facebook Sponsored Stories Update
Another change from Facebook; another wave of complaints from its users. Only this time, the Facebook Sponsored Stories Update will give people a reason to complain.
Facebook has begun to add sponsored stories to users’ news feeds Tuesday.
Instead of clearly marking them as “Sponsored” ads though, they’re labeled ad “Featured”. This labeling may initially mislead users into thinking these ads are important stories about their friends or Pages they Like. Only after hovering over the marking will they realize that they are really paid ads. Although Facebook is trying to distinguish these Featured ads from sidebar ads that are marked “Sponsored”, the reality is that can be bought by any advertiser.
Why You Will Hate Facebook Sponsored Stories Update | Comment from Facebook
TechCrunch reported the following from Facebook regarding its new Sponsored Stories Update:
We’ll be labeling these stories as Featured instead of Sponsored. We are using the term featured because we want to make it clear to people that they’re seeing content from a Page or person they have chosen to connect to. Since people can see marketing messages from both Pages they have and have not Liked elsewhere on Facebook, we want to make it clear that marketers can only pay for stories to be featured in your News Feed if you have explicitly liked the Page. And because you are always connected to your friends, we are also labeling stories from your friends that have been paid to be featured in your News Feed as featured to keep things consistent. We still hope to show an average of approximately one featured story in News Feed per day.
From the perspective of Faceook, they believe that this new Sponsored Stories update will be a benefit to both users and marketers. Users will like this because they will only be able to see posts featured in their feed only if they liked the page. Marketers will like this feature because the ads are well targeted.
Why You Will Hate Facebook Sponsored Stories Update | Top questions about the feature
So how does this work? Facebook has also updated its ‘Help’ section to address questions regarding the changes with Facebook Sponsored Stories:
Top Questions
How will I know if a story is featured? How often will I see featured stories?Featured stories will be labeled as featured. Most people will only see about one featured story a day. If you visit your news feed a lot, you may see more…How do I stop seeing featured stories?Featured stories are just like the other posts you see, which means you can: Click hide to remove individual storiesLimit the volume of stories you see fro…Will any of my stories be featured?Some of your stories may be featured. But you always determine who can see the stories you share. If a story does get featured, it’s shown to the same peop…Who can pay to feature stories?Businesses, organizations and individual people can pay to feature stories. For example, the owner of a local coffee shop can feature stories about people…
What do you think of Facebook’s Sponsored Stories update? Will they benefit you or is it just another nuisance? Leave a comment below and let us know how you feel.