Around 15% of Facebook users are willing to pay to see no advertisements at all, with 8% saying they would pay $10 or more per month for this feature, according to the Search & Social Survey (2012-2013) by technology firm Greenlight.
Back in March, Facebook revealed its News Feed redesign. At that time, Greenlight’s COO Andreas Pouros commented that the social platform’s format for successful advertising in newsfeeds on mobile had been used in the redesign of its News Feed on all platforms, including mobile, tablets and desktop, and predicted that these changes would push the company’s ad revenues up.
Last week, Facebook released its second-quarter results, beating analysts’ expectations with $1.81 billion in revenue. The company said that 88% of its total revenue came from advertising and 41% of the total advertising revenue for the quarter was generated from mobile. The social media site also said that its active advertisers had exceeded one million thanks to the significant growth in local businesses.
Greenlight’s survey further shows that almost 70% of users rarely or never click on ads or sponsored listings in the social network, which according to Pouros, indicates that user apathy is real.
The company polled 500 people from around the world in order to estimate how much Facebook users are prepared to pay to see no ads when using the social network. Greenlight interviewees included students, medical staff, lawyers and policemen, as well as the unemployed, about their engagement with online advertising, social networks and search engines with the aim to gain insight into the relationships between marketers and customers.