Facebook tries to help advertisers and users with new ad control options

The ads you see on Facebook are set to become even more targeted, as the social network’s interest-based advertising, which they have been rolling out for the past year, will now include information from pages that use Facebook’s Like button and similar social features.

Facebook tracks user activity both on their platform as well as sites that include its social widgets, but now the information collected from the latter source will be added to Facebook’s ad platform, i.e. be available to advertisers.

Users can prevent this from happening by turning off this kind of advertising from their account’s ad settings page. A change to the settings will be reflected across all the devices and browsers the user uses to visit Facebook.

Users can, of course, take advantage of advertising controls on their mobile devices, and another way to turn off these ads can be found here. This tool will help users opt-out of targeted advertising across over 100 companies.

“We hope that the ads people see will continue to become more useful and relevant and that this new control will make it easier for people to have the ads experience they want,” Stephen Deadman, Global Deputy Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook, commented while announcing the change.

The move comes right as Apple allowed ad blocking apps on iOS. It’s probable that Apple is has made this move with the view of ultimately offering advertising options through their own channels, and to push their own News app while slashing the revenue of other news sources.

Whatever the reason, advertisers are squirming. The alacrity shown by iOS users in using ad blockers has shown them that many are tired of ads altogether, and that better ad targeting might stem the inexorable tide for a while.