Facebook has confirmed its plans to axe the ‘sponsored results’ from search pages, within a year following its launch, as part of its efforts to cut down its 27 different ad units to less than half.
The ‘sponsored results’ ad, enables advertisers to target users during the search process, suggests that Facebook is still struggling to recognise how best to monetise search attention.
Facebook said in a statement that in keeping with the goal of streamlining its ad products, starting in July advertisers will no longer be able to buy sponsored results.
"We’ve seen that most marketers were buying sponsored results to advertise their apps and games, and we already offer app install ads and Page post link ads on desktop to achieve these same goals," the company said.
Facebook’s other advertising tools to be eliminated include the Questions product for Pages and the online Offer product, while the company is planning to add social context to other advertising choices including Page post photo by the autumn 2013.
Simultaneously, Facebook is also anticipated to augment the number of ways of monetising its Graph Search.
