A hot potato: Never let it be said that companies are running out of places to shoehorn their ads into. Facebook, for example, is running a test that places sponsored content in users' notifications. They appear alongside standard notifications in the Facebook app, and it seems there is no way to block them entirely.
From the Windows Start menu to Microsoft Outlook, there's no limit to the places that companies will monetize by selling ad space. PCMag's Rob Pegoraro has spotted a new location: the Facebook app's notification list.
Pegoraro writes that he started noticing the paid promotions, which show a "Sponsored" label, on the Android Facebook app about two weeks ago. Much like ads in the main Facebook platform, there's a menu next to each one that lets users hide more ads from that advertiser, but there's no way of blocking all sponsored posts.
The ads also have the "Why am I seeing this ad" link, though Pegoraro notes that, with one exception, they did not seem to target his interests. He added that the ads have not yet appeared on the Facebook website or on his iPad Facebook app. The ads did not appear in the notifications history, either.
Meta has confirmed that the ads in the notification list were part of a small-scale test, limited to a subset of users.
"We're always working to help brands reach more customers and make it easier for people to discover businesses and products most relevant to them," Meta spokesman Tom Channick said in a statement. "We are running some early, limited tests of ad features in notifications, and we hope to share more as we learn."
More ads in previously unused areas are always going to annoy people, and there's no guarantee that Meta will roll these notification ads out to everyone. However, companies tend not to care too much about users' opinions when ad money is involved. Plus, we've already got ads in Messenger, so Meta might think we're used to sacrosanct spaces being violated by now.
In June, Meta started testing unskippable ads on Instagram that users had to watch for a period of time before being able to scroll further. An "ad break" icon appeared with a countdown timer that prevented users from browsing through more content until they viewed an ad, at which point the counter started running down.
Meta is putting ads in Facebook notifications, but hey it's "just a test"
