Advertisers Dismayed Over Facebook's Bugs & Miscalculated Ad Metrics
Facebook has just admitted that there are miscalculations in their ad metrics, most of these are related to the interactions of consumers in most of facebook's contents. Because of this, a lot of advertisers are questioning how the social media giant is spreading their ads across the network.
Facebook released the statement last Wednesday saying that they found "bugs" in their metrics, specifically on four areas: number of video views, weekly and monthly reach over-counting, and the time spent by consumers on instant articles.
According to The Street, this is the second time that the tech giant released a statement regarding the ad bugs and miscalculated metrics. However, Facebook claims that even though some content views bloated, this did not affect any of the advertiser's billing. Even so, many advertisers are still angered about the Facebook's miscalculated metrics for making them believe statistics that are not accurate.
"This is not good for Facebook. The first instance of metrics miscalculation was bad, but manageable,"Pivotal Research Senior Analyst Brian Wieser said. Forbes notes that Facebook found out that the bugs have been miscalculating video views by 60 percent to 80 percent over the past two years. This was not just the problem, though. There are five other metric miscalculations noted by the publication such as overstated total number of profile followers by 5 percent; overstated referral average rate; organic page reach metric rate, among others.
Wall Street Journal says that Facebook can cut down Advertisers' frustration by undergoing audit protocols through the Media Rating Council, which is something that Facebook is now considering according to Facebook's Global Marketing Solutions Vice President Carolyn Everson. Her team is now on a series of meetings with numerous marketers and ad buyers. "My desired outcome...is that we are viewed as displaying complete transparency. We want to demonstrate our commitment," she said.
