Facebook's Newest Monetization Experiment: Ads in Your Notifications

A new advertising test at Facebook is turning the notifications lists of some users into yet another place for ads, as I discovered when I somehow got included in this test.

These paid promotions, listed with a "Sponsored" label amidst my usual notifications, started showing up in my Facebook app on Android about two weeks ago.

I’ve now seen at least four, and they all have several things in common:

• The menu next to each includes an option to hide that advertiser but not one to block all sponsored notifications.

• That menu also features the usual “Why this ad?” link, but neither its contents nor the nature of the ads themselves show any serious attempt to target my interests. (Hint: I am not a software developer or a solar-panel installer.) The only possible exception: an ad for the Los Angeles Rams that I saw the day after flying to L.A. 

• These ads have yet to appear in the app on my iPad or in Facebook’s desktop website. 

• I must be part of a small minority of Facebook users to be in this test, to judge from the lack of other reports about it online. 

• As of Tuesday morning, none of the previous sponsored notifications appears in my history.

The Facebook ad guide, the reference for businesses looking to market to potential customers on the platform, doesn’t mention this ad format. But Facebook and its corporate parent Meta have a history of testing ad options in new places, such as inside Oculus virtual-reality apps.

Advertising remains a fundamental part of the bargain at this free-to-use network, although European users can pay for ad-free service starting at €9.99 a month, an option Meta added to comply with new European Union regulations. 

Meta confirmed that what I’ve seen is a small-scale test but did not provide many other details.

“We're always working to help brands reach more customers and make it easier for people to discover businesses and products most relevant to them,” Meta spokesman Tom Channick said in a statement. “We are running some early, limited tests of ad features in notifications, and we hope to share more as we learn.”

This experiment with “Sponsored” notifications, if carried forward into Meta’s regular ad menu, could make the notifications list more like the regular Facebook. That's not a compliment; the News Feed interface already feels like a game of Marketing Pinball that has your attention bouncing off ads, suggested pages, and groups while you try to catch up on news from friends.

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Having unavoidable ads in your notifications would also represent a break from Facebook’s history of offering remarkably fine-grained controls for that list, which can help you curb its enthusiasm and have your phone only buzz with news about the people most important to you. 

Is that worth it to Meta? The company doesn’t seem short on cash, having reported $12.4 billion in net income in its first-quarter earnings. But it’s been spending billions on “metaverse” and AI ambitions that may not be matched by user demand, and it has not let up on layoff binges that may now cut into the Oversight Board that it set up as its own version of a Supreme Court. 

So this case of the company reaching for a little extra revenue may be yet another sign that eleven-figure profits don’t go as far in Silicon Valley as they used to.