No More Mr. Vice Guy: Facebook Pulls Ads from Inappropriate Pages

When it comes to advertising, many companies are understandably picky about where their ads appear. That plug for a minivan makes sense in a mainstream magazine, but it’s a little odd if the same ad shows up near adult content. So Facebook announced today that it’s going to begin pulling ads from Groups and Pages that have sexual content. Pages with violent content also won’t be able to display pages anymore.

Facebook ads on the right side of certain pages will be removed.
The Facebook ads that will be getting pulled from certain pages are the ones that appear on the right side of the window, and only on pages or groups that have controversial content.

“In order to be thorough, this review process will be manual at first, but in the coming weeks we will build a more scalable, automated way to prevent and/or remove ads appearing next to controversial content,” Facebook explained in a press release. “All of this will improve detection of what qualifies as questionable content, which means we’ll do a better job making sure advertising messages appear next to brand-appropriate Pages and Groups.

Facebook is referring to adult and violent content that doesn’t violate its terms; there are certain kinds of controversial content that is already banned by the social network. The move ought to please advertisers.