Date: Thursday, August 16, 2007
Facebook makes changes to get advertisers back on board
Facebook has introduced tighter controls over where ads appear on their site, after many of Facebook’s top advertisers removed their accounts following adverts appearance on the BNP profile page.
Following the appearance of ads next to the British National Party’s Facebook profile, many of the site’s advertisers removed their accounts from the social networking website. Now in a bid to entice back the big companies such as Vodafone, the Central Office of Information (COI) government body, First Direct, Virgin Media and the AA who boycotted the site, Facebook has said advertisers will have access to technology which allowed them to direct where their adverts would be placed on the site.
The UK Internet Advertising Bureau have said that this is a necessary step social networking sites need to take to avoid losing more advertisers from the medium. The chief operating officer for Facebook said that he expected most if not all of the advetisers who left the site to renew their contracts following the introduction of the new measures. The company said they were developing the technology to introduce the new controls at the moment, and which would soon be available to all advertisers, so that they could avoid their adverts appearing next to profiles they didn’t want to be associated with. The controls would also allow companies to specify that their ads did not appear on group pages. The companies involved in the boycott have said that they are willing to discuss the changes, and many said that they would come back to the site if they could be guaranteed of where their ads would appear. Although high-profile companies have been keen to target the social networking market because of its wide consumer base, they have also been put off by the risks associated with the sites due to the limited control these sites have over their content.
Source:
Times Online
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