Bad news for folks who hate ads on Facebook: it looks like the world’s most popular social network will be serving up some new ads in the near future. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook plans to launch “a new type of mobile advertising that will target ads based on the apps that consumers use, in an effort to boost mobile revenue and find a way to make money off the millions of websites that connect to the social network”. In case you’re wondering how or why Facebook is collecting data about the apps you use it’s got nothing to do with the apps on your phone/tablet – just the apps that rely on Facebook Connect (i.e. services like Soundcloud etc).
Facebook will allow developers and advertisers the ability to place ads for apps directly in a user’s news feed on their mobile devices – whether he or she has expressed interest in that company or not. An example of how the advertisements would work: if a user plays a Zynga game frequently i.e. Words with Friends, they will start getting ads for other Zynga games on their news feed – regardless of whether they’ve Liked Zynga or its apps on Facebook.
Judging by how terrible Facebook ads are at the moment (how often have you seen ads that are relevant to you?) I wonder how this new ad service will turn out. Facebook’s new mobile ad system might be launching on July 16th, next Monday.
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