Are Facebook ads more subtle than other ads?
Facebook’s primary ad system plugs straight into the Facebook News Feed, the stream of information that serves as the primary interface for the social network. This system was created to deliver ads that could grab your attention as effectively as what internet companies call “organic content” — posts from your friends and family and other entities you are connected to on Facebook.
Indeed, ads are often the same as organic content, just with money behind them. “There is an ad-selling mechanism, but the ad itself isn’t really an ad. It’s content,” said Ron Berman, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school who studies online advertising, including the Facebook ad system.
Facebook was part of a gradual but significant change in online advertising over the past decade. As more people have moved more of their online activity from PCs to mobile phones, the lines between ads and organic content have continued to blur, particularly on popular social networking service like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
