Facebook removing ads from its desktop Pages

School of Digital marketing

The trend of ad-free Facebook Pages continues. Facebook has started testing another redesign of its desktop Pages that omits the ads that normally appear on the right-hand side of the page.

The apparent certainty of Facebook removing ads from its desktop Pages might not be that massive a deal in digital marketing. For starters, even if Facebook does pull them from desktop Pages, it doesn’t mean it’ll pull them from its desktop home page or people’s profile pages. And ads on its desktop Pages may not bring in enough money to justify them crowding the page when Facebook might prefer to free up that room to make Pages even more of a hub for businesses, publishers and celebrities, as it’s doing with the mobile version of Pages.

Facebook seems to have four ideas in mind of how it wants to change the current look of its desktop Pages: separate the profile photo from the cover photo, move the navigation menu to the left side of the page, move the page information boxes to the right side and remove the right-side ads altogether.

Facebook’s desktop ad business remains a significant, if small, revenue stream, and the right-hand ads are the smallest part of that supplementary stream. In the first quarter of 2016, 18 percent of Facebook’s overall ad revenue came from its desktop ads. But Facebook is serving up fewer desktop ad impressions than it used to, and the likely majority of the ones it is serving are news feed ads, the company’s cross-device cash cow that rakes in more money per ad than the seemingly endangered desktop-only right-hand ads.

The trend of ad-free Facebook Pages continues. Facebook has started testing another redesign of its desktop Pages that omits the ads that normally appear on the right-hand side of the page.

The apparent certainty of Facebook removing ads from its desktop Pages might not be that massive a deal in digital marketing. For starters, even if Facebook does pull them from desktop Pages, it doesn’t mean it’ll pull them from its desktop home page or people’s profile pages. And ads on its desktop Pages may not bring in enough money to justify them crowding the page when Facebook might prefer to free up that room to make Pages even more of a hub for businesses, publishers and celebrities, as it’s doing with the mobile version of Pages.

Facebook seems to have four ideas in mind of how it wants to change the current look of its desktop Pages: separate the profile photo from the cover photo, move the navigation menu to the left side of the page, move the page information boxes to the right side and remove the right-side ads altogether.

Facebook’s desktop ad business remains a significant, if small, revenue stream, and the right-hand ads are the smallest part of that supplementary stream. In the first quarter of 2016, 18 percent of Facebook’s overall ad revenue came from its desktop ads. But Facebook is serving up fewer desktop ad impressions than it used to, and the likely majority of the ones it is serving are news feed ads, the company’s cross-device cash cow that rakes in more money per ad than the seemingly endangered desktop-only right-hand ads.