Facebook will take action against ads appearing on various pages with offensive content, BBC News reported.

Facebook responded to complaints about a BSkyB (commonly known as Sky) advertisement for a Marks and Spencer (M&S) voucher placed on a paged called "cute and gay boys," featuring photos of teenage boys.

"We recognize we need to do more to prevent situations where ads are displayed alongside controversial Pages and Groups. So we are taking action," Facebook said in a blog post Friday.

The social network said it would implement a "gold standard" for its pages and their advertising privileges starting Monday. All advertising on pages deemed violent, sexual or graphic in any way will be removed.

The "gold standard" will grant about 10,000 pages worthy to continue advertising, while every single other page will be reviewed. Those pages being inspected may be added to the list, but if not, their ads will be removed.

"In order to be thorough, this review process will be manual at first, but in the coming weeks we will build a more scalable, automated way to prevent and/or remove ads appearing next to controversial content," the post read.

M&S asked Sky to remove its ad amidst the complaint and both companies have suspended some of their Facebook advertising campaigns. They do wish to continue advertising with the social media giant, but will wait until Facebook completes its investigation.

"We have asked Facebook to devise safeguards to ensure our content does not appear alongside inappropriate material in the future," Sky told the BBC in a statement. "We will review the situation in due course."

An M&S spokesman said the company is taking the issue in highest concern and would not "tolerate any inappropriate use or positioning of its brand and has very clear policies that govern where and how our brand is used."

Facebook has been extremely successful with tailored, or "retargeted," ads that appear on a user's page based on web activity and interests posted on one's page.

Retargeting is a simple way for websites to advertise to users who visit a website, like an online store, then go elsewhere on the web. For example, when a user browses an online store then returns to Facebook, they might see an ad for that store.

AdRoll, a retargeting firm, said its retargeted ads in the Facebook news feed were clicked more than 50 times more than ads on the right hand side.