Nothing that Facebook does goes unnoticed – a price that any significant player has to pay, especially given the ad monies dedicated to the platform by major agency networks and marketers. Over the weekend, Facebook faced some concern from leading marketers when it admitted a discrepancy in its video metric miscalculation.
The social platform informs that over a month ago, it found an error in the way it calculated one of the video metrics on its dashboard – average duration of video viewed. The metric should have reflected the total time spent watching a video divided by the total number of people who played the video. Instead it reflected the total time spent watching a video divided by only the number of ‘views’ of a video, that is, when the video was watched for three or more seconds. This miscalculation overstated this metric.
“While this is only one of the many metrics marketers look at, we take any mistake seriously,” said David Fischer, Vice President of Business and Marketing Partnerships at Facebook, in a company post.
Facebook fixed and informed its partners of the discrepancy. However, an error in reporting for two years, and for a platform as big as Facebook, is not easily forgiven by agencies or advertisers. Market observers have predicted that this could lead for renewed calls for an independent metric to understand what advertisers are getting for their investments.
“We know we can’t have true partnerships with our clients unless we are upfront and honest with them, including when we make mistakes like this one. Our clients’ trust and belief in our metrics is essential to us and we have to earn that trust. That is why we also give marketers choice by offering third-party video verification options with companies like Nielsen and Moat. We want marketers to measure video with us in the way they feel most comfortable,” Mr Fischer said in the statement.
The development has attracted mixed feedback. The investors have shown unhappiness and Facebook’s share on Friday dropped by 1 percent. However, several analysts have pointed out that not only did Facebook proactively indentify and the correct the miscalculation in the metric but also this was another indicator of its importance in advertising plans.
Facebook has apologized to its advertisers, further stating, “This error should not stand in the way of our ultimate goal, which is to do what’s in the best interest of our partners and their business growth. We can only be successful if we’re providing clients with the tools to drive their business forward, and we’ll continue to deliver on that promise.”
