Facebook Finds Two More Ad-Metrics Discrepancies
December 09 2016 - 2:31PM
Dow Jones News
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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