How to Reduce Ads on Facebook – Step-by-Step Guide

How to get rid of ads on Facebook​? Well you can’t, they make it impossible, Facebook makes sure ads are everywhere —it’s literally how they make money. But you can mess with the settings to at least see fewer ads. This is a tutorial on how to reduce ads on Facebook.

This post was created on March 1, 2025. Facebook frequently changes its settings, so this video and tutorial may become obsolete soon. Hopefully, you find it in time and it helps.

Table of Contents

• Open Facebook Settings
• Adjust Ad Preferences
• Remove Interest-Based Categories
• Stop Facebook Using Outside Data
• Cut Down on Ads by Managing Topics
• How to Reduce of Ads on Facebook Video Tutorial

Open Facebook Settings

First, you gotta get into the settings. Click your profile icon in the top right. From there:

• Select “Settings & Privacy”
• Click “Settings”

Adjust Ad Preferences

This is where things get buried in menus. On desktop (way easier than mobile):

• Click “Ad Preferences”
• Look for “Manage Data”
• Click “Categories used to reach you”
• You’ll see stuff like Employer, Job Titles, Education, Relationship Status. Click each one and set “Use this information to personalize your ads?” to “No”.

Remove Interest-Based Categories

Facebook loves putting you in ad categories based on what you do, who you follow, what you click. You can remove them:

• Go to “Categories associated with you”
• Click “View and manage”
• You have to go through them one by one and remove them. Annoying, but it helps.

Stop Facebook Using Outside Data

Meta (Facebook’s overlord) tracks you outside of Facebook too. So, you’ll wanna turn that off:

• Find “Activity information from ad partners”
• Click “No, don’t make my ads more relevant by using this information”
• Same process for “Ads shown outside of Meta”—turn that off too.

Cut Down on Ads by Managing Topics

Facebook decides what ads to show based on topics you interact with. You can tell it to show you less:

• Go to “Customize Ads”
• Click “Ad Topics”
• Click “See all”
• You’ll see tons of topics—click each one and select “See Less”

How to Reduce Ads on Facebook Video Tutorial

You can watch video below or follow this link to YouTube.

Summary

It’s tedious, but the fewer topics you have, the fewer ads you’ll get. I’m personally curious how long this will last—since I reduced the number of categories and interests they target me for, I imagine it will take some time for them to find new things to target me with. I also noticed my mobile feed seems to have fewer ads than my desktop feed.

Could be a coincidence or nothing, though. Honestly, if it weren’t for all the events I attend, I’d just drop Facebook. But for now, I’m stuck with it. I know that “How to Get Rid of Ads on Facebook” is something I frequently search for. If this helps, please let me know.

After a few weeks of this, it is more successful on the mobile app, but it starts sneaking in a few “suggestions” after a few days, I just delete them (push X button on suggestion) and it cleans up my wall for the rest of the day, Facebook is desperate to try to feed us ads and find our interests.