Facebook Adjacency Crisis: U.K. Advertisers Can Now Opt Out of 'Groups' Placement

Facebook made a move late last week to appease several advertisers that recently yanked campaigns (and others who might) from Facebook due to ad adjacency with the right-wing British National Party’s group on the site.

It’s giving U.K. advertisers the right to opt out of placements alongside any of its Groups, which is certainly the easiest — and maybe the only feasible — way it could address the most current crisis.

To clarify one point not made obvious in the FT.com coverage of this last week, advertisers are not able to choose specific groups to be excluded from or included in their ad buys. Rather, they can opt out of appearing next to Facebook Groups in general. From the company’s statement on the move:

“For those U.K. advertisers who don’t want ads displayed alongside content that they find objectionable, we are working with them to find alternatives. UK advertisers now can choose whether or not to run their banner ads alongside group pages on Facebook. We are continuing to look into ways to apply our technology to give advertisers even more options in the future.”

For now, this is a U.K.-only concession, so as always with media and site ad exclusion, it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.