The tests are being conducted in some selected countries
Advertisers can choose topics to be excluded in News Feed
People can now increase or reduce the amount of content they see from the friends, family, groups, and pages they’re connected to on Facebook.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company has announced that the platform is testing new ways to give users and brands the option to choose which items they prefer to see in their news feed.
“We’re introducing several controls designed to give people and businesses the ability to tailor their News Feed experience.
We are also announcing plans to collaborate with third-party partners to develop a brand suitability verification tool for News Feed,” it said in a blog post.
The platform is testing new ways for users to customize their News Feed by making it easier to find and use News Feed controls to adjust people’s ranking preferences.
As part of this test, people can now increase or reduce the amount of content they see from the friends, family, groups, and pages they’re connected to and the topics they care about in their News Feed Preferences.
“We’re also making existing controls easier to access, including Favorites, Snooze, Unfollow, and Reconnect,” it said.
It will begin testing in countries around the world to a small percentage of users, gradually expanding in the coming weeks.
“This is part of our ongoing work to give people more control over News Feed, so they see more of what they want and less of what they don’t.
We’ll continue to share our progress as we test and learn,” it added.
Businesses with the Topic Exclusion controls will also have their News feed expanded with the Topic Expansion controls.
The test will be carried out with a limited number of advertisers that run ads in English.
The advertiser topic exclusion control allows an advertiser to select a topic that will help define how an ad will be shown on Facebook, including the News Feed, and can pick three topics to exclude- News and Politics, Social Issues, and Crime & Tragedy.
When an advertiser chooses one or more topics, their ad will not be delivered to users recently engaging with those topics in their News Feed.
The company said that in its early testing with advertisers, it found that advertisers who excluded the News and Politics categories were able to avoid News and Political adjacency 94 percent of the time.
Those who excluded the Tragedy and Conflict categories were able to avoid Tragedy and Conflict adjacency 99 percent of the time while those who excluded the Debated Social Issues categories were able to avoid Debated Social Issues adjacency 95 percent of the time.
“People using our apps can manage the ways advertisers can reach them in Ads Preferences. This includes whether or not they are included in the three topics for Topic Exclusion controls for News Feed,” it said.
It further explained that “From our conversations with the industry, we know that this solution may not solve the needs of every advertiser and that some advertisers are looking for content-level granularity. We see this product as a bridge between what we can offer today and where we hope to go — content-based controls”.
The platform will also begin exploring and testing a new content-based suitability control soon. This test is aimed at addressing concerns advertisers have of their ads appearing in Facebook and Instagram feeds next to certain topics based on their brand suitability preferences.
“We aim to design our exploration in line with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) Suitability Framework. We expect to kick off in 2022 and provide updates along the way starting in Q1,” it noted.
It is also planning to, before the end of 2021, collaborate with third-party brand safety partners to develop a solution to verify whether content adjacent to an ad in News Feed aligns with a brand’s suitability preferences.
“We’ll start with a request for proposals in the coming weeks. We will share our progress working with the industry on these initiatives as they develop,” it further stated.