Facebook to remove unpaid ads by marketers on news feeds

Social media giant Facebook is making some changes to give marketers the kind of update they never wanted to hear: If they want to reach customers on the giant social network, they will have to start buying ads.

Companies that previously sent advertisements from their free Facebook Pages now face a harder time reaching fans.

"This change is about giving people the best Facebook experience possible," Facebook said in a statement Friday. "The idea is to increase the relevance and quality of the overall stories -- including Page posts -- people see in their News Feeds."

Facebook explained the reason they changed the News Feed is because Facebook users  complained about the number of promotional posts. But that won't affect the number of ads people see on the site.

"Beginning in January 2015, people will see less of this type of content in their News Feeds," Facebook continues. "All of this means that Pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time."

The company said it would target three types of posts placed on the pages of companies and products: "posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app," "posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context" and "posts that reuse the exact same content from ads."

The company is defining "promotional" as any Facebook post that repeats the content of an advertisement, solely pushes people to buy a product or download an app, or pushes people to enter a sweepstakes with no other content.