Facebook won’t allow you to directly eliminate ads from your news feed – but you can limit them by understanding how you have been targeted.–PC Pitstop.
Limit Ads in Your Facebook
by Josh Kirschner for Techlicious
If you’re a regular user of Facebook, you’re no doubt familiar with sponsored ads popping up in your Facebook News Feed, woven in with posts you care about from your friends and family. And chances are you’re not happily smiling when you see them, unlike these two ladies in a Facebook ad promotion. You just want the ads to stop.
Unfortunately, there is no direct way to stop ads from appearing in your News Feed. However, by understanding the ways advertisers use targeting to determine who sees their ads, you can use that same information to make yourself undesirable to advertisers and, therefore, far less likely to see ads in your News Feed.
1. Demographics
Demographic targeting is one of the key ways advertisers pick their audiences. After all, if you’re selling diapers, it’s a lot more cost effective to target new mothers than 70-year old seniors. So the key is to make your demographics unappealing to advertisers. Here are the demographic targeting options Facebook offers and how you can use them for your benefit
Location—Leave your address blank or change to a foreign location unlikely to be targeted by advertisers (e.g., Guam).
Interests—Facebook lets advertisers target people who have “expressed an interest in” or Liked pages related to a topic. So the fewer pages you Like or comment on, the less likely you will be targeted by advertisers.
Age—Age is a heavily used factor in ad targeting. However, few advertisers are targeting centenarians. So add 100 years to your age. Born in 1974? Let’s change that to 1905 (the farthest back Facebook allows you to choose).
Gender—Did you know that in addition to “male” or “female” (which are widely used as targeting factors) Facebook also allows to pick a “custom” gender? I’m sure you can come up with something interesting for this one.
Other demographic factors, such as Language, Relationship, Education (including fields of study), Work (employers, job titles, industries, office types), ethnic affinity, Parents, Life Events (engagements, long distance relationships, Friends of newly wed) can also be used for ad targeting. So, the fewer of these items you have in your profile, the less likely you are to be targeted.
