Set Your Facebook Ad Preferences

Facebook ads have been around a long time, but many people comment that they are seeing more ads in the news feed now and they don’t like it.  We have all experienced purchasing or searching for something online and then seeing ads about that item or related items in our news feeds afterwards. There are some ads that I am happy to see and I am willing to keep seeing them, but others really don’t interest me at all.  Is that the same for you?

We know that ads pay for Facebook and keep it free for users. I have purchased items that I have seen on Facebook. However, some ads don’t interest me and I can reduce the number of unwanted ads in my news feed by setting my Ad Preferences.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about setting News Feed preferences.  That is not the same as setting your Ad Preferences. To manage your ad preferences on Facebook, click on Settings (listed under the down arrow to the far-right on your top menu bar).  Then click on Ads in the sidebar.  You will see a page that looks like this:

Each of the items listed there has a drop down list of choices you can make in terms of your preferences.  For example, “heavy metal” music was listed as one of my interests. When I hovered over that block, a Facebook popup told me that it was there because I liked something related to heavy metal.  I don’t remember doing that, but I am not interested in heavy metal music now, so I deleted that interest from my list. The interests that I still have, I left.

I went through each of the categories and indicated my preferences.

• My Interests (Note that there is a list of categories at the top of the Interests section and you need to look into each one i.e. Travel, Hobbies, etc. to set your preferences)
• Advertisers I’ve interacted With
• My Information
• Ad Settings
• Hide Ad Topics

This is probably an area that I am going to need to visit from time to time, as Facebook may assume I am interested in some topic when I am not and I will be able to let them know that.  At least Facebook is giving us some control over what we see.  I am happy for that.

If you want an explanation of how Facebook ads work, click here.  You might want to look at this first, as it may help you to make your decisions regarding preferences more easily.

Your comments are always welcome!