Ads have officially landed on Firefox’s new tab page

The Firefox browser, lagging its well-heeled rivals, will soon be serving up an array of ads to one and all. Mozilla, the nonprofit group that develops and updates the popular Internet browser, said Thursday that it will begin placing ads where thumbnails of your frequently visited websites would normally be found when you open a new tab. While many of those thumbnails, which Firefox calls “Enhanced Tiles,” will remain as quick links to your favorite sites, some will feature sponsored logos or other promoted images.

Mozilla’s controversial advertising program for Firefox is finally going mainstream after the non-profit first announced plans for the program in February. The official Firefox release now shows advertising on the new tab page when the browser is set to display Enhanced Tiles. Mozilla’s advertising looks no different than it did when we saw the tiles pop up in Firefox nightly builds in August. You have a number of tiles showing sites you’ve visited, as well as any tiles you’ve pinned to the new tab page. In addition, you’ll see the advertising tiles with a largely unobtrusive, but still noticeable sponsored tag beneath them. The first companies signed up to advertise in Firefox include Booking.com and CVS Health. The latter is a client of advertising firm Mindshare North America, which is partnering with Mozilla to deliver ads to Firefox. The first ad I saw was for Citizenfour, the Edward Snowden documentary by Laura Poitras that has been appearing in pre-release builds of Firefox for several weeks.