Have you ever been puzzled by the kinds of ads that turn up in your Facebook feed? There’s a simple way to find out why the ads are being shown to you and to get rid of ones you don’t care to see again.
Ads are easy to spot because they’ll be labeled with ‘Sponsored’ at the top.
Click the three-dot menu at the right of the post and choose “Why am I seeing this?” from the drop-down menu.
Unlike someone reading a magazine or watching a network TV show, all Facebook users do not see the same ads. Ads are targeted to you based on a variety of factors. This ad was targeted to me because I’ve expressed interest in DIY activity by liking certain pages or responding to other ads and I fit the age and location demographics. I have to option of letting Facebook know if I’m actually interested in the topic.
If I don’t want to see any more ads from this advertiser, I can click Options and choose to have ads from eSalon hidden.
My other choices from that three-dot menu are to save the link to the ad in case I’d like to come back and learn more later or share it later. I can also choose to hide the ad and mark it irrelevant if the ad is of no use to me. Or choose repetitive if they’ve been showing me the same ad over and over again.
If there’s a real problem with the content of the ad. For example, you think it’s a scam or offensive in some way, click on Report ad. Only do this if there’s a real issue, not that you’re just tired of seeing ads.
Choose what the problem is, and click on Submit.
If you use Facebook, you’re going to see ads. Ads are what keep the service free. But you can control the ads so you see some that might actually have useful content.
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