Facebook to offer “more clarity and confidence” on metrics
Following a blunder which saw Facebook miscalculate video views for more than two years, the social media platform has this week announced changes to way it handles its data and insights.
Facebook said it wants to give its advertising partners “more clarity and confidence” about the insights it provides and that it recognises the importance of reliable metrics.
“We know that having access to reliable metrics is important to the millions of partners who use our services to grow their businesses,” the company said. “As our products evolve to meet the needs of the people and businesses that use them, our metrics will also evolve.
“Our goal going forward is to communicate more regularly about our metrics, so that our partners can focus on doing what they do best – serving their customers – with the best insights possible.”
In late September, Facebook quietly disclosed that its metric for the average time users spent watching videos was inflated because it was only factoring in video views of more than three seconds.
The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, said the earlier counting method likely overestimated average time spent watching videos by between 60% and 80%.
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On Wednesday, Facebook said it would increase third-party verification by allowing advertising partners to verify display impression data through third-party verification partners, including Moat, IAS and comScore.
Facebook said this addresses requests the company has received from partners for independent measurement of the amount of time ads are viewed on-screen.
For publishers, Facebook said it is 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,” the company said.
Facebook said it has also created a new internal review process to “ensure our metrics are clear and up to date as our product offerings continue to evolve.”
As part of this process, which Facebook describes as a “long-term investment”, the social media platform announced it will be communicating more regularly about updates it makes.
Commenting on the news, Ian Dowds, CEO of UKOM, the body that sets and governs the UK industry standard for online audience measurement, said it was a positive step in the right direction, but the update felt US centric.
“While Facebook is letting third parties in for ad verification, the UK industry’s current audience standard (UKOM) is measured by comScore and so the close Facebook and Nielsen relationship in the US that produces Digital Content Ratings does not help the UK market with a detailed and consistent measure for Facebook video in relation to rest of the market.
“Hopefully this very welcome intention of Facebook to open up to independent verification and measurement might mean that this could change going forward for audience measurement as well as ad measurement.”
Meanwhile, the IPA’s research director, Lynne Robinson, said she urges Facebook to work more closely with industry to “create and harmonise transparent audience metrics” and then take advantage of the long established, industry standards and auditing facilities such as JICWEBS/ABC.
Robinson, who at the start of the year called for wider transparency from digital players, said JICWEBS/ABC would then ensure that Facebook is actually complying to their stated audience measures.
Last week Aviva’s group brand director expressed her “outrage” and “anger” over Facebook’s mishandling of metrics.
Speaking to Mediatel, Jan Gooding called on digital players to be subjected to audits that match the scrutiny of traditional media.
“I felt really outraged and angry when I first [learned of the miscalculation],” Gooding said. “And I felt it mattered massively; as an advertiser, am I getting what I thought I was paying for?”