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| By Justin Smith | 12 Comments » |
After increasing reports of deceptive advertisements within some Facebook applications, Facebook has confirmed that it has banned two advertising networks from operating on the Facebook Platform.
The two ad networks, SocialHour and SocialReach, were allegedly presenting Facebook users with misleading advertisements inside third party applications, and sometimes putting Facebook user data on outside landing pages in ways that violated Facebook’s privacy policy. The ad networks are currently not serving any ads on Platform applications, and developers have turned to other networks to fill their inventory.
Facebook says it banned the ad networks for “deceptive content” and failing to correct their practices after being warned.
“We’ve received some reports of deceptive content in ads placed within apps by developers. These ads are not from Facebook but we are concerned about any potential threat to our users’ experience. We have had the ads removed from a number of apps and prohibited two advertising networks from providing services to applications on Facebook Platform because they were not compliant with our policies and failed to correct their advertising practices,” a Facebook spokesperson told us.
Are the suspensions permanent?
“We will evaluate each circumstance individually, and are certainly open to reinstating relationships with those who demonstrate a commitment to appropriate practices,” Facebook said.
SocialHour and SocialReach had no comment on the suspensions.
Facebook has been increasingly cracking down on Platform ad networks that make liberal use of user data to increase performance. For instance, some ad networks use friends’ photos or names in ad copy like “Can you beat their IQ score?” that falsely implies friends have previously engaged with the app or site being promoted. Sometimes, those ads prompt users to enter mobile phone information, but users often don’t know they’re signing up for a subscription service that is automatically billed to their mobile carrier every month.
In general, Facebook is trying to clean up the image of ads on the Platform to maintain user trust. In this case, Facebook warned ad networks that were engaging in behavior it deemed unacceptable a couple of weeks ago of new policies, but apparently not everyone sufficiently changed their practices in time.
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June 11th, 2009 at 1:22 am
about time!
June 11th, 2009 at 5:22 am
[...] Facebook bans two spammy ad networks [Inside Facebook] [...]
June 11th, 2009 at 7:35 am
It seems Facebook loves it’s users
This is one of the biggest step taken by Facebook.
June 11th, 2009 at 10:00 am
This is a great step. Deceptive marketing is worse than Spam.
Russ
http://twitter.com/russjosephs
June 29th, 2009 at 11:59 am
[...] We recently spoke with SocialCash CEO Rob Jewell about the current state of the market, the recent Facebook policy enforcement actions that were taken against other Facebook Platform ad networks, and SocialCash’s plans going [...]
July 24th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
[...] month, Facebook suspended two Facebook Platform ad networks from operating on the Facebook Platform due to deceptive practices and bad user experience. The ad [...]
July 25th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
[...] month, Facebook suspended two Facebook Platform ad networks from operating on the Facebook Platform due to deceptive practices and bad user experience. The ad [...]
July 28th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
[...] ensure that all Platform ad networks value user trust as highly as Facebook itself does – Facebook suspended two ad networks that didn’t comply with its rules just a few weeks [...]
July 31st, 2009 at 7:44 am
[...] platform. Facebook already banned two ad networks, SocialReach and SocialHour, from its platform last month for posting what the company called “deceptive content” within developers’ [...]
October 19th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
[...] active in policing the banner ad practices of apps on its platform. The company initially shutdown two ad networks back in June that were leveraging social graph data from the platform to produce deceptive ads. More recently, [...]
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:30 pm
[...] below]. Mobile ad scams have been a problem on Facebook for many months, as we’ve previously covered. We have also heard that these scams can be much more profitable than more legitimate forms of [...]
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:50 pm
[...] included by many offer companies within offer walls inside of social games. As we reviewed months ago, these sorts of ads have kept popping up in within third-party advertising networks in social games [...]