Mozilla on Tuesday revealed that it’s ready to sell advertising within Firefox’s new tabs page. The announcement follows an earlier announcement wherein it revealed that Firefox would begin blocking third-party advertising by default.
Mozilla revealed its new initiative “Directory Tiles” at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual leadership meeting held in Palm Desert, California.
When an existing Firefox user opens a new tab in Firefox, a list of auto-generated thumbnails for frequently visited websites pops up. But the same does not happen when a new user opens the Firebox browser for the very first time. The new user might not see any thumbnails at all.
The new initiative titled Directory Tiles – a combination of sponsored sites, popular sites based on geographic location and Mozilla ecosystem items – will fill in blank new tab pages.
The company’s blog post read: “Some of these tile placements will be from the Mozilla ecosystem, some will be popular websites in a given geographic location, and some will be sponsored content from hand-picked partners to help support Mozilla’s pursuit of our mission”.
“The sponsored tiles will be clearly labeled as such, while still leading to content we think users will enjoy.”
Darren Herman, Mozilla’s vice president of content services, said: “Mozilla is moving from a dumb window to the internet to a smart agent on behalf of the user, putting the user first.”
Mozilla is yet to announce any advertising partners, but revealed that it is seeking them out.
“We are looking to partner with like-minded content owners and creators, such as leading publishers and curators as well as innovative advertising agencies,” Mozilla spokesperson said.
