Usually, I don’t pay attention to the advertising column on my Facebook page. I couldn’t care less about the ads, there can be anything there because I use Facebook to stay in touch with my friends, check out the news feed and photos. However, lately Facebook has introduced a new trick that makes me look there and acknowledge the presence of what is on this column.

In the ad column I can see know who ‘likes’ what and the ‘like’ button to like it myself. I was wondering if we realize that Facebook uses us for marketing purposes and we may not be fully aware of this. I ‘like’ the Facebook page of some companies so this means that these companies appear on my network pages endorsed by my ‘like’ in the ad section. Hmm…

Do you ‘like’ stuff on Facebook? Why do you ‘like’ it? People ‘like’ things for many reasons, sure. Some companies give out free stuff or useful info… But you need to know that what your friends ‘like’ will likely appear on the ad section of your pages. This way, you may be tempted to follow the crowd and ‘like’ it too.

On the other hand, this is tricky. Facebook aims at blurring the line between the marketing and the usual use of Facebook. The links and ‘likes’ we post on Facebook may be used for marketing purposes to generate more ad revenues for Facebook. The brilliant idea here, from the marketing perspective, is that there is no creative story involved but just an endorsement of a commercial product by you or your friends. And this can be more powerful than any traditional advertisement.

Is there a way to stop your ‘like’ from appearing on the ad section? Yes, there is. If you go to Privacy settings and then edit settings for ‘Adds, apps and websites’ you can see at the bottom ‘edit setting’ for ads. Then you would click ‘Edit social ads setting’ and here you can choose not to have your ‘likes’ appear in the sponsored ads column.

What are your thoughts about this? Do you feel OK with Facebook displaying your ‘likes’ in the ad column?