Facebook’s ad metric problem is becoming Zuckerberg’s headache
nypost.com
nypost.com
> """Elsewhere, Facebook admitted to exaggerating the number of full views that video ads received"""
You can tell they didn't do any homework, since the issue was that full views were under reported when the audio and video tracks were not the exact same length. The result is that full views were actually roughly 35% greater than what page managers saw reported.
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/11/an-update-on-metrics-and... goes into the details of what the issues with each metric calculation is. You can draw your own conclusions as to whether each was (a) important and (b) favored FB. That link also goes into FB's plans for next steps in making metrics externally audited and more transparent.
Now if only they'd let me use DCM tags to measure impression data and VTs.
'VT', in this context, probably meant 'viewability tracking' or 'viewability targeting'.
But I guess what many really want is for government to step in and use government force to punish FB until people feel that some kind of justice has been done. (burn the witch!)
That's why democracy is fundamentally incompatible with liberty.
On a side note: The media is attacking FB because they feel that FB doesn't censor and steer public opinion in the way they would like it to be. They are all up in arms claiming that Trump is FB's fault after they themselves have reported 24/7 on Trump. (but so biased, even Stalin would have cringed) That's the only reason why this article even exists.
It's not a question of "doing their homework". That's the naive cop-out. The inflation of metrics and numbers is company-wide, and I am pretty certain most - if not all of it - is deliberate. Especially after 'Zuck' took the Company Public.
If you have proof of inflating metrics and numbers, especially deliberately, you're welcome to post some. Posting detailed reports of errors discovered during an internal audit when under no obligation to do so, on the other hand, is not in keeping with your conspiracy theory.
You dont think a public company is obligated to audit internal controls and keep shareholders and regulators in the loop?
A public company is not obligated to rush out details like "We’ve determined that the average time spent per article had been over-reported by 7-8% on average since August of last year. This was caused by a calculation error: we were calculating the average across a histogram of time spent, instead of reflecting the total time spent reading an article divided by its total views."
3+ seconds representing a single FB view has been the definition of a video view on FB since the metric became public.
https://medium.com/@hankgreen/is-facebook-lying-about-video-...
I get the big brother corp hate, but let's be reasonable and factual with it if we must go this way
I fail to see how calling FB out on cherrypicking criteria for counting conversion on videos is invalid because those criteria were made know ealier. This is IMHO alike of arguments over e-bay auctions doing "image scam" not being scam because you knew what was sold, after all it was there in auction's description. It's still dishonesty.
Course the clients might be running several campaigns at once and can't tell what is driving sales. If only they knew what half of advertising dollars worked!
"How Facebook is Stealing Billions of Views" - Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell exposed this with detailed analysis and evidence. Watch it here => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q
I contracted with their Ad team for a few months, and can't say more for NDA reasons, hence I am pointing you to publicly available media / expose.
The people who view the pirated content are still viewing content on FB. That isn't "artificially inflat[ing] their view counts." Those are real views, which is what advertisers are paying for, even if what they are viewing is stolen.
The point about counting 3 seconds of auto-play as a view is problematic, unless advertisers know that is what they are paying for. Maybe 3 seconds is enough for someone to glance at it and at least read the brand name in their mind, which does seem to count as an "impression".
> When I paid to promote my page I gained 80,000 followers in developing countries who didn't care about Veritasium (but I wasn't aware of this at the time). They drove my reach and engagement numbers down, basically rendering the page useless.
> I thought I would demonstrate that the same thing is still happening now by creating Virtual Cat (http://www.facebook.com/MyVirtualCat). I was surprised to discover something worse - false likes are coming from everywhere, including Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia. So even those carefully targeting their campaigns are likely being duped into spending real money on fake followers. Then when they try to reach their followers they have to pay again.
Yes, this one also. If anyone thinks this is a 'Conspiracy theory', you can confirm or refute it yourself for less than 50$, the way I did and the way the BBC reporter in this above video did.
After I left the Ad Team, and horrified at what I saw as widespread fraud, I registered a throwaway domain, put some viral videos from youtube, injected google analytics on the site / blog, bought a pre-paid visa card for 50$ (so facebook doesn't keep auto charging my card) and 'promoted' my blog posts shared on a Facebook page I set up.
Just like the BBC author, I noticed most of my 'Likes' on the FB page were from Indonesia, Pakistan, and many from Vietnam. And I checked some of the profiles, and they either appeared down right fake (i.e. no activity other than liking a 1000+ FB pages, or they weren't active since like 2011 or 12.
Worse still, for the pages I did promote - i.e. blog posts shared on FB wall for 5$ / day, I barely got 10 click-throughs to the actual post, but the Ad analytics said I "reached 600 / 700 something" viewers.
WTF does that mean??? ( I know what it means, that they "displayed" it in their feed) But how does this help any one, think small businesses, grow their brand or business??)
Yes. Exactly this. And a few more 'hacks' the 'Zuck' way ... :)
Most of views, if not all, are from click farms. Stop wasting your money.
I was constantly updating and monitoring my campaign just like an Adwords campaign which you should. These aren't "set and forget" hope you get customers. Monitor your return, if results are poor move your ad dollars elsewhere.
FBX is a RTB ad exchange. If only 10% of clicks are real, you simply bid 10% less than you would otherwise. You'll get the same ROI.
As far as I can tell the entire ad industry is just all the various parties either fudging numbers or blatantly lying to each other. So long as no one calls anyone else out, they all walk away with a happy sum.
Now if you want to post a lynching or ads for ISIS feel free to do so
FBX is an ad EXCHANGE where inventory gets sold to the highest bidder. If FB over-reports views by a factor of 2X to advertisers, the average CPM that advertisers are willing to pay will simply fall by 50%. Sure, there may be a short time period before bids equilibrate, but FB is liquid enough that this would happen extremely quickly.
The same principle applies to people up in arms concerning "click fraud" on Facebook and/or Google's ad networks. As an advertiser, you really should not CARE if there is click fraud. So long as it impacts all advertisers equally, we're all bidding for the same quality inventory.
It's useful to keep in mind that the vast majority of advertisers on any liquid ad network will not be successful. It's easy to rationalize that the reason you aren't able to make the channel work is that the network "rips off" its advertisers. In reality, there is no incentive for them to do so.
So naive. Inflating clicks / views let's them charge more to advertizers (who falsely think that advertising on facebook is more ROI than on Google or elsewhere). And what Facebook gains is increases in share price every time they declare their earnings.
That's a huge assumption.
Besides, if click fraud is rampant it is no consolation to say "well, at least everyone's ads are being clicked by bots!" The end game isn't to win the ad auction, it's to be seen by real people who might buy your product.
But remember kids, there are only two metrics that truly matter here: how much did you spend on Facebook ads, and how much revenue did you bring in as a result? Everything else, all the other metrics, all the different forms of advertising and different relationships Facebook invents in their world, these things are merely tools to optimise the ratio of the two metrics that count and they have value only to the extent that they do so.
One of the most blatant issues with FB is what they did with their pages. You spend tons of money and effort building an audience and they don't let you reach it unless you pay. And pay through your teeth you must, every time you want to reach your followers.
In other words, you never own your audience. This is a huge business mistake. You want to own your audience. Your list is worth gold. Here's where email marketing (to a vetted list) still beats FB.
If you use FB to drive traffic to a site, have people hop-on to your email list and then market directly, sure, yeah, that works. You can do that with Google just as well.
I truly hope everyone follows your advice to drive traffic over to an email list, being able to dump your marketing into my spam folder takes fewer clicks than marking your follow-up posts as something I never want to see again in my FB news feed.
And this is exactly one of the problems with FB. So many people pay good money for what effectively translates to nothing. I have personally watched a campaign delivered 400 visitors per minute (peak) to a site and produced exactly zero sales in three days. Not blaming FB 100% for this, of course. But, if you measure it, they do tend to produce a lot of useless clicks.
Here's the difference between FB advertising and AdWords. It's simple.
People to to FB to chit-chat with friends and family. Not to buy.
People go to Google because their are looking for something and, yes, they are far more likely to be in a buying mindset. Particularly when compared to FB.
When was the last time anyone said: "I need to buy a rug. Let's go check them out on Facebook". Never. It's Google or Amazon.
This is why we don't pay programmers to find bugs, but from the opposite perspective.
Potential causes would include greed.
"It’s not difficult to measure engagement." => with video ads it's doable but it's always approximations when it comes to ad viewability (and for example, even if I can see an ad, it does not mean I'm watching it)
"Online advertising has a history of opaque reporting" => compare this to TV or radio
It's clearly an article against Facebook Ads, even if they are miscalculating things, it seems too biased to be taken seriously.
So while the numbers measured may be different, the advertisers weren't naive enough to use that as the only metric to plan ads.