Advertisers have raised concerns with Facebook about brand safety on the platform. To fix this, Facebook is testing a topic exclusion feature.
Topic exclusion would allow advertisers to choose which content they wouldn’t want their ad showing next to. Two topics currently being tested for exclusion are Crime and Politics. Facebook has said that they will be listening to feedback so that they can improve the tool during testing. This will likely include even more topics available to exclude.
Some people do have privacy concerns about this new tool, as this is the first time a news feed will be subject to controls in this manner. So before official release, Facebook will be working to make sure they are honouring their commitment to privacy.
This tool would be great for certain types of brands that don’t want to be associated with heavy hitting or potentially controversial content.