China censors urge media to "stop hyping the story" on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's visit in the country. (Photo : Getty Images)
Facebook is making its move against ad-blockers as it will start to force advertisements to appear on all of their users visiting their desktop website.
The ads will reportedly still appear whether an ad-blocker is active or not. Facebook announced that they have a different way of implementing ads on their desktop website to bypass the technology of ad-blockers.
One of the huge reasons why Facebook is standing up against ad-blockers is because most of their revenue comes from ads. Facebook VP of Engineering Andrew Bosworth said that the social network is ad-supported and that ads were part of the overall experience, the Wall Street Journal has learned.
Ad-blocking has become an issue for websites and apps that are providing free content at the cost of consumers viewing ads. Facebook is one of the largest ad-supported social media networks and their move could have an effect on the dynamics of the current ad-blocking issue.
The argument being thrown by the users who use ad-blockers is that the advertisements can sometimes become too intrusive and distracting from the actual content that they are viewing. It can also be a problem for mobile users as the ads also eat up a fair amount of data which can then creep up to their daily data cap.
Facebook is still providing users the option to opt-out of ad targeting services that they provide to the advertisers, TechCrunch reported. Users can visit the Ad Preferences settings to check what businesses they want to opt-out of the ads.
The social network giant commissioned a survey to see why users have been using ad-blockers. Top of the list of the reasons is that ads can be too disruptive to the browsing experience.
Facebook believes that they can make their ads fast and secure which should give users no reason to block their ads in the first place. Without the ads, Facebook can take a huge hit in their revenue although some say that they are already making money by selling their users' statistics and data.
Users may see a message on the top of their News Feed on the desktop website saying that ad-blockers will not work anymore. Facebook's move can also urge other websites to do the same to save their online businesses that depend on ads.
