The problem with Facebook's miscalculated metrics
As the most popular social platform the expectations are high and Facebook's ambitious plans that keep growing year by year bring out bigger challenges.
As the most popular social platform the expectations are high and Facebook's ambitious plans that keep growing year by year bring out bigger challenges.
Facebook announced another glitch with its metrics and marketers start wondering whether they can really trust the social network’s measuring methods.
It’s the third time in the last three months that Facebook reports a problem with its metrics and this has affected its credibility among marketers and publishers.
As the most popular social platform the expectations are high and Facebook’s ambitious plans that keep growing year by year bring out bigger challenges. As marketers and publishers invest more time (and money) on it, they are expecting a Return On Investment for their efforts. Thus, they weren’t happy when they found out a problem in accuracy that occurred several times.
The first case was revealed in September when Facebook admitted that there was a miscalculation in the average viewing time for video ads the past two years. This led to an artificial inflation in the video views
This led to an artificial inflation of the viewing time in video ads, as it took into consideration all the video views of more than three seconds. According to Publicis Media, this has overestimated the average viewing time by 60% to 80%, while Facebook made it clear that this error didn’t affect billing.
November was a busy month for Facebook and everyone working on its metrics, as there were miscalculations with the video views, the monthly Page reach, and the time spent on Instant Articles.
In more detail:
Facebook announced more updates for its metrics, along with new miscalculations and fixes, this time affecting the estimated reach, the measurement of the reactions in live videos and a problem with like and share buttons.
It is more important than ever for Facebook to include third-party verification for its metrics and it already made it clear last month that they are heading towards this direction:
We believe strongly in third-party verification to prove the business value we’re driving for our partners, and we have a long history of working with global industry leaders like comScore, Moat, Nielsen and Integral Ad Science (IAS). We’re now exploring additional third-party reviews to validate the reporting we offer partners. We’re also launching the ability to verify display impression data through our third-party viewability verification partners, including Moat, IAS and comScore. This integration addresses requests we’ve received from partners for independent measurement of the amount of time ads are viewed on-screen.
For publishers, we’re partnering with Nielsen to include Facebook video and Facebook Live viewership in Nielsen’s Digital Content Ratings (DCR). This will give publishers access to third-party verification for video metrics and allow for comparable digital and TV metrics in Nielsen’s Total Audience Measurement.
Marketers and publishers have every right to be unhappy with Facebook’s continuous glitches and it certainly affected its credibility up to a point.
However, looking on the bright side, it may be a good opportunity for the social network to evaluate the growing needs and examine third parties that could help them scale their efforts.
As the products evolve, it’s important to focus on maintaining its quality and we are hoping that these problems will help Facebook work harder on the right direction.
If it wants to be taken seriously for its advertising platform and its business aspect, then it’s crucial to bring back the much desired trust and invest in the proper tools that will make the measurement more accurate. This should be an interesting challenge for 2017.