Facebook's 'Sponsored Stories' Turns Your News Feed Activity Into Ads

Facebook is rolling out a new advertising format called Sponsored Stories, which allows advertisers to prioritize content from the News Feed by turning your Facebook activity into promoted content.

Sponsored Stories are seen only by your friends that would normally see your stories in their News Feeds. However, according to the product's help page , there is no op-out option for Sponsored Stories.

Already, similarities are being drawn between Sponsored Stories and Twitter's Promoted Tweets, which presented advertisements in the form of content for the site. But Facebook's approach goes a step further by turning the activities of its users into revenue for the site.

Facebook hopes that these Sponsored Stories (aka "word-of-mouth recommendations") will engage users more than the site's targeted ads. "Seeing that a friend has checked in at Starbucks is a much more compelling reason to visit than a standard advertisement telling a user to go get a coffee," Inside Facebook writes.

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