Today HTC has announced a pilot program of sorts for the display of native ads within BlinkFeed, their news and content aggregation application. Since Blinkfeed displays right on a user's app launcher, it's a natural place for HTC to try and put advertising, although users may not feel as enthusiastic about the changes as HTC does.

According to HTC's blog post about the changes, the display of native ads in BlinkFeed will initially be limited to users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Taiwan, and China. The promotions will be for sponsored apps from Yahoo, Twitter, and Appia, as well as HTC's own products. HTC will be providing an option to opt-out of these advertisements, and with this being a pilot program there's no indication if or when it will ever make its way to other markets.

Source: HTC

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  • nathanddrews - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

    Can BlinkFeed be uninstalled or disabled?
  • LordConrad - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

    Just use a different Launcher, like Apex or Nova or Google Now.
  • Gich - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

    You can disable it.
  • Refuge - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

    Yes, when it was first introduced it couldn't be. But a later update changed that.
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    HTC's done a reasonably good job about following Google's advice and turning most of the stuff in their skin into a collection of apps that can be installed/updated/removed independently of an OS update.
  • tommydokc - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    just go to the blink feed and use the pinch motion and then drag it to the top right of the screen whre it says remove.
  • ToTTenTranz - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

    What's the point for this on a consumer's perspective?
    Are people getting money out of this, like Play Store credit?
  • nandnandnand - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

    cen i halv amd flury xXx artilce
  • jfallen - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link

    Yeah, pretty poor showing AnandTech. I know the writer may be sick/ill but you've got a good depth of writing talent. Your site finance team must be riding your ass for all the lost traffic. If they're not? Get a new financial team that plays hardball and gets your writing team to cover gaps.
  • Ferd Berfel - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

    bye bye Blink. Root. Install cm or something else. oh ya.

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