Facebook has started displaying adverts in users’ news feeds.
From today, brands using the social media website will be able to pay to feature one of their ‘sponsored stories’ amongst the main feed of users’ social media content.
This will ensure that these stories are more noticeable and are viewed by a higher percentage of users.
The news ads, labelled as ‘Featured Stories,’ will feature similar content to the ‘sponsored stories’ which currently appear along the right hand side of the Facebook home page. They will either users inform that one of their friends has ‘liked’ or ‘checked in’ with a particular brand, or that a page they have previously ‘liked’ has posted new content.
A Facebook spokesperson has already confirmed that users won’t see any adverts which aren’t somewhat related to the actions of them or their Facebook friends.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, they said: “These stories respect your and your friends’ privacy settings, and people will only see stories about people and pages they’ve already connected to.”
The website will be introducing this new feature gradually in order to avoid the typical backlash from users when changes are made to the Facebook platform.
According to zdnet.com, Facebook has pledged to only show one of these adverts per day.
