Facebook envisions platform where users prefer to see ads
At Adobe and InVision's design conference in San Francisco, Julie Zhou, Co-Director of Product Design at Facebook, said the company envisions a day where users will miss ads if they were gone. Zhou said "We want to one day show you a News Feed that doesn't have ads and show you one that does have ads and have everyone say, 'The News Feed with ads was better'”. Facebook is currently working on understanding users’ personal interests so that it can tailor ads accordingly, but admits it is not quite there yet. Mike Davidson of Twitter, Keith Bormuth of Pinterest and Ian Silber of Instagram, were also part of the conference, which hosted discussions around how social media’s viral power is driven by strategic design decisions in everyday human behaviours.

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As you scrolled past the various Turkey Trot selfies and declarations of gratefulness on Facebook this week, did you notice the ads? If so, what did you think of them?

Facebook envisions a day in which you'd miss them if they were gone.

That's the grand plan that Julie Zhou, codirector of product design, recently outlined at InVision's product design conference in San Francisco.

"We want to one day show you a News Feed that doesn't have ads and show you one that does have ads and have everyone say, 'The News Feed with ads was better,'" Zhou says.

She said that Facebook has posters hanging around its headquarters that say "Ads as good as organic." The company wants to be able to understand your interests so well that it can tailor its ads so that they genuinely help you out on a regular basis.

"I don't think making money is at odds with a great experience," Zhou said. "We're all consumers. We buy things. We want to know about things like deals. We've all seen advertising that has been inspiring and entertaining and useful. And that should be the bar for how we build a great ads product."

That's the end goal, but Facebook definitely isn't there yet.

When I decided to take my own News Feed for an ad-enjoyability test drive, I found the experience underwhelming.

The first two ads I saw felt poorly selected:

Facebook

The third, however, told me about a big Black Friday sale at a boutique retailer that looked interesting, which offered a better fit.