Following rumors that suggested that HTC may soon begin showing ads in BlinkFeed, the device maker today confirmed its plans to do just that.
Starting today, HTC is going to start showing what it calls “promotions” in the BlinkFeed app. The ads will include sponsored apps from AdNetworks partners like Yahoo, Twitter, and Appia as well as promos for HTC’s own accessories and devices. The ads will appear like a regular BlinkFeed post, but they’ll be marked as “Sponsored” and they’ll contain a button like “Buy Now” for you to click. HTC says that it will offer a way to opt out of the ads.
HTC’s BlinkFeed ads will start appearing today in select markets, including the US, UK, Germany, Taiwan, and China. HTC urges that these promotions are currently just a pilot, and so HTC plans to analyze how they perform before rolling them out to additional markets.
BlinkFeed is a free tool for HTC device users to keep up with news from publications, social networks, and more, and it’s actually kind of surprising that it took HTC this long to test out ads as a way to bring in some additional revenue. The good news is that they ads aren’t pop-ups and won’t appear outside of BlinkFeed, so they should be pretty easy to ignore if you don’t like ‘em. And hey, if you insist on using BlinkFeed and are really bothered by the ads even as you scroll right by them, you can turn ‘em off.
