14 Feb 2024
- 24 Aug 2016
- 4 Min read
Industry round-up: Facebook cracks down on ad blockers and clickbait while Moz changes its focus
- by Emily Park
The latest edition of our industry round-up will fill you in on all of the latest digital marketing news, which includes Facebook’s efforts to give its users more control over the ads that appear on their newsfeeds, and Moz’s decision to focus entirely on core SEO.
Facebook gives users more control over the ads they see
Facebook believes it has the remedy to ad blocking: giving users more control over the adverts that are targeted at them. The social media giant relies heavily on advertising revenue, so it was only a matter of time before it took a stand against the ad blockers many of its users employ. So, from now on the social network will be bypassing these systems and everyone — regardless of whether they have ad blocker software installed on their devices or not — will begin to see adverts on their desktop newsfeeds. But, the platform has introduced a
new tool that it hopes will make this transition slightly easier for its users.
It commissioned research firm Ipsos MORI to find out why people use ad blockers in the first place and, after surveying more than 2,000 people from six different countries, they concluded that disruptive ads were the biggest issue. Therefore, Facebook announced in a blog post that it will be giving users more control over the ads they see by making their ad preferences easier to use. People will now be able to opt out of receiving ads from categories that don’t interest them, such as travel or sports, as well as news from specific companies they don’t like.
Moz to focus entirely on search
On Wednesday, Moz announced in a blog post that it will be focusing all future efforts on core SEO, which means that it will no longer be offering its Moz Content and Followerwonk tools. Instead, the company is going to concentrate on the likes of rank tracking, keyword research, local listings, duplicate management, crawl and links.
These changes are being made due to the fact that Moz hasn’t seen the level of growth it expected from increasing the breadth of its product suite. In the announcement, CEO Sarah Bird said: “After a lot of analysis and soul searching, we decided to radically simplify our strategy to re-focus on what we love and what our customers value from us: search.” She then went on to explain that the company will also be increasing investment in areas such as product and email marketing.
Facebook introduces new anti-clickbait algorithm
Thanks to a new anti-clickbait algorithm that Facebook is rolling out, posts from Facebook Pages and websites that withhold, exaggerate or distort information in their link headlines will no longer be welcome on Facebook newsfeeds. The platform previously made an update that reduced the distribution of posts that lead people to click and quickly return to their newsfeed and this new initiative will build on that.
A system will now be used to identify phrases that are commonly used in clickbait headlines. To develop this algorithm, tens of thousands of headlines were categorised with two points in mind: does the headline withhold important information about the content of the article, and does it create misleading expectations for the reader.
It is thought that most Facebook Pages won’t be affected by this change, but those that rely on clickbait-style headlines should expect their distribution to decrease — although, they’ll stop being impacted by this change if they alter their approach. If you want to make sure your content still gets noticed without resorting to clickbait, make sure you check out our tips for creating clickable headlines!
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