Facebook Adds Like

Last year, Facebook announced that it would start including information from websites and apps its users use to serve interest-based ads to them. Since then, the company has been gradually rolling out this kind of advertising around the world.

Facebook announced this week that it will begin incorporating data from its “Like Button and similar social features” (that is the social plugins that websites use) into its serving of interest-based ads. It’s somewhat hard to believe it wasn’t already using this data, but that does appear to be the case.

Facebook thinks the addition of such data will help it make ads more relevant to users.

To give users control over the kinds of ads they see, they’ve provided tools to turn these ads off, including the Digital Advertising Alliance AdChoices program. This gives users a way to opt out across over 100 companies. Facebook also has tools in the ad controls on its mobile apps.

In the new announcement, Facebook said it’s providing another way that people can turn off these ads using the ad settings page on Facebook itself.

“If you choose to use this tool, it will become the master control for online interest-based advertising across all of your devices and browsers where you use Facebook,” Facebook said. “If you’ve already made a choice about online interest-based ads using existing tools, you don’t need to do anything. We’ll continue to honor your choice across all of your devices and browsers where you use Facebook. And we’ll of course continue to support the Digital Advertising Alliance, as well as the iOS and Android tools going forward.”

More information on ad controls is available here.

Image via Facebook