Very few knew about the new ad slot that Mozilla offered in Firefox though this new unit was announced in early 2014 and was live by end of the same year. The unit was called as “Sponsored Tile” which appeared in the new tab of the browser as shown below:

SponsoredTitleAd_knowonlineadvertising

After the Mozilla has stopped the sponsored tile ads, the new tab looks without any tab mentioned as sponsored and shows the tile for the site you have recently visited or the ones you have pinned as your favorite, refer below tab without any ads:

MozillaFirefox without Ads_knowonlineadvertising

Why did this happen?

Though this was a big change for Mozilla and another revenue stream for them but they stopped, giving reason as not their ‘apt business’ to work on but the core experiences for their users i.e. the browser capabilities.

Vice president Darren Herman emphasized that they had learned a lot from the experiments with advertising content and also proven that advertising with maintaining the respect for users and its privacy is possible. However, they have also learned that users wanted content that are relevant, exciting and appealing but not exactly ads for now therefore they stopped the same keeping the dedication towards content and relevancy. Though at the end they mentioned they will continue to experiment with advertising content, because they feel they can improve the advertising ecosystem.

Two major advantages:

  • The unit does not hamper user’s attention while he is reading something on internet whereas it shows sponsored tiles that are relevant to their browsing history or if new user then they will see Directory Tiles offering an updated, interactive design and suggesting useful sites.
  • They can’t be blocked by AdBlocker’s

Fact:

Google is the only source of revenue for Mozilla and this was the another one which got dropped in few months

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