How Facebook’s Ad System Works
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/technology/how-facebook-ads-work.html
In this article in The New York Times, Facebook’s ad system is described as a product of the rise of smartphones. As more and more people use smartphones to browse the web, including their Facebook feed, the placement of ad content has become more prominent as mobile devices only allow for a single column of information. As such, ad content has become placed in the same column as the news feed as opposed to in a sidebar. This has lead to some controversy, as the advertising has become hard to differentiate from the actual content that the user sees.
The article also spoke about Facebook’s matching market and the instant auctions it holds in order to sell ad placements. In addition to holding auctions, Facebook also considers the relevance of the ad next to the regular content. However, because of the addition of ads in between content, as well as the implication of Facebook ads contributing to Russian interference in the 2016 US election, Facebook has pledged to add at least 1000 more human moderators to review ads before they go up for auction.