Faced with media scrutiny, Facebook reiterated in a blog post that it is taking action to improve the quality of third-party ads in its apps. The post was inspired by the controversy that began last Friday when Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington confronted Offerpal chief executive Anu Shukla about scam offers.
Today, the company said it is disabling two more ad network and offer companies that have consistently violated its rules.
Offerpal is the leader in promotional deals known as offers, which users can accept in lieu of making a credit card payment in a game or app. These offers have increasingly become popular in social games on Facebook and other platforms.
Nick Gianos, a member of Facebook's platform team, said that deceptive ads are a widespread problem on the web and that "this battle is not new and it's far from over." Facebook had to deal with stimulus bill scam ads on its platform earlier this year and updated its policies for third-party ads in July. At that time, it also disabled two ad networks that were running non-compliant ads. It also forced more than 100 apps to comply with its rules. More than half of those apps had more than a million monthly active users each.
"Our policies are clear," he said. "If you're an ad network and don’t comply with them, you are doing a disservice to your customers, and you should expect your business opportunities on Facebook to cease."