Facebook To Listen Users' Feedback On Ad Serving
Facebook says that it will be able to serve better and more relevant ads through the user's News Feed by taking into account users' reactions and feedback. The social network has been giving people the choice to hide an ad so they no longer see it in their News Feed. Now it would also take into account the specific reason they didn’t want to see an ad, and use that as a signal to inform whether or not show the ad to other people.
Facebook also said it would pay more attention to feedback from people who don’t often hide ads so that when they do give feedback, the company would take it as "a stronger signal," according to Max Eulenstein, Product Manager @ Facebook.
ALl that means that from now on, after someone tells Facebook they don’t want to see a story, the network will also ask why.
From the user's view, such a policy would make sense in case, for instance,
if an ad was offensive or inappropriate. Facebook would ask you why you chose to hide an ad, and obviously would not show the specific ad again if it proved to be a bad one. But generally, popping up a windows asking you why you just hid an ad would be annoying.
Fortunatelly, Facebook says it will weight feedback differently based on how often someone hides ads and other content in their News Feed. If someone hides things very rarely, Facebook will consider that when the network choose what to show them. "If we think there is even a small chance they might hide an ad, we won’t show it to them," Eulenstein says.
Facebook says that people who rarely hide ads ended up hiding 30 percent fewer ads with this change.