By Mike Shields 

Facebook's ad-measurement odyssey continues. The social-media giant has revealed two new adjustments to the data it provides marketers to evaluate the effectiveness of their ads.

In September, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook had been overestimating a video-advertising metric for as long as two years in some cases. Then last month, the company revealed it had found four more measurement discrepancies after undertaking an extensive audit of all of its advertising-related data.

That announcement seemed to put Facebook's ad-measurement challenges to bed. But on Friday, Facebook said it had uncovered two more discrepancies and was working to make specific changes to its ad-data output.

Specifically, Facebook explained in a blog post that during live video streams, it was in some cases counting individual users' reactions to posts (such as likes and other responses) as part of another related metric, i.e. the number of reactions that these live streams generated when shared on Facebook. Facebook said it is reallocating these metrics.

In addition, Facebook said it uncovered a discrepancy in how metrics such as likes and shares are counted via its mobile app, and the company is in the process of resolving the issue.

Beyond the two new discrepancies, Facebook also said it has changed the methodology it uses to help advertisers estimate how many people will potentially see ads on Facebook. The new methodology relies less on projecting data using smaller samples of Facebook audience. This change should decrease or increase Facebook's ad-reach estimates by less than 10% the company said in the blog post.

News of these new discrepancies was first reported by Marketingland.com.

Individually, none of these metrics should affect Facebook's billing, since marketers typically sign ad contracts that guarantee a certain delivery of broader metrics, such as the total number of times an ad is shown to consumers over a set period. Still, the fact that this issue keeps arising will likely irk ad buyers, some of whom have publicly been calling for Facebook to rely less on its own internal ad data and work with more third-party ad-measurement firms when negotiating deals.

Ian Schafer, founder and chairman at ad agency Deep Focus, credited Facebook for being communicative regarding these issues, and recognized the complexity of providing so much data for a slew of new products like Facebook Live.

That said, Facebook's growing dominance in digital advertising -- and its perceived technological expertise means most marketers will hold Facebook to a higher standard. "The are trying to get it right," he said. "Yet they are a data business, with a huge responsibility. And advertisers don't like margins of error much."

Write to Mike Shields at mike.shields@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 09, 2016 14:16 ET (19:16 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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