Facebook began showing paid advertising to people in their news feeds today, and introduced a new label for the paid posts that could confuse users about their origins, rather than clarify that the message was placed by an advertiser.
The FT wrote about Facebook’s plan to insert paid “sponsored stories” among social messages last December, when the company vowed it would move slowly, and clearly label the paid posts as “sponsored.”
But in today’s roll out, the company changed that label: instead of “sponsored,” the posts will be marked “featured” in the bottom right of the post.
Facebook defends the new terminology in the name of its users, saying sponsored stories can only be seen by people who have already Liked the company delivering the ad or by friends of people whose comments are featured in the ad.
“We are using the term ‘featured’ because we want to make it clear to people that they’re seeing content from a Page or person they have chosen to connect to,” Facebook said.
But the term could mislead Facebook users into thinking the post was featured for relevancy, rather than because an advertiser paid to place it there, said Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner.
“Sponsored seems to be more transparent than featured,” he said. “It is a departure from user expectations and from industry convention.”
