Facebook ads are everywhere… on Facebook at least. Sometimes it can be hard to get away from them in your news feed and there is talk that one day soon the ratio of ads to organic posts may tilt in the favour of ads.

One way of potentially combating this overload of ads has been revealed this week as Facebook have tested targeting people instead through the Groups feed.

For some this may not be the most noticeable of changes but it could provide benefits for both sides of the coin, as the Group’s topic will be taken into account to add an extra layer of targeting and to show the most specific and relevant ads to the individual.

Using information gleaned from each targeted user’s Facebook account, such as age and location, should also ensure that individuals are not targeted by irrelevant ads within the Group, as one can often find in the current news feed setup.

Dividing the amount of ads between different pages will essentially prevent your news feed clogging up with too many ads and give the user a sleeker experience with subtler ad placements.

So far, the test has only run in Group feeds of selected accounts located in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Canada, so don’t expect it to be flying into your Group too soon.

Facebook will be evaluating the response to having ads appear in Groups before deciding whether it is worthy of rolling out on a worldwide basis.

And just to be clear, anonymous advertisers will not compromise your Group’s integrity; it is purely a tool for expanding the target market of existing adverts to Groups that match up with the intended audience.

To us, this change looks like it could be a masterstroke with advantages galore. All that awaits is to see how the sample Groups react.