Dive Brief:
- Firefox users will no longer see advertising in the Tiles format, where Mozilla had been experimenting with different ad offerings. The company is instead moving toward content discovery.
- Sponsored tiles were added to Firefox last November and Mozilla announced it would fulfill all current commitments while winding down the Tiles ads over the next several months.
- Firefox users will still have the Tiles format, but with content designed to improve the browsing experience rather than be served with ads.
Dive Insight:
About the move a Mozilla spokesperson told Venture Beat, “We will continue to experiment with content experiences on new tab pages within Firefox and across our products. However we are stopping advertising through Tiles.”
Mozilla released a statement further explaining why Tiles ads were dropped, “Advertising in Firefox could be a great business, but it isn’t the right business for us at this time because we want to focus on core experiences for our users. We want to reimagine content experiences and content discovery in our products. We will do this work as a fully integrated part of the Firefox team.”
The statement went on to state the “advertising ecosystem needs to do better” and that Mozilla will work to bring balance in advertising as well as build products that “respect user privacy and deliver experiences based upon transparency, choice and control.”
Before this move Mozilla had been promoting three types of Tiles content: content from Mozilla, publisher content and advertising.
