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posted by on Thursday November 17 2016, @10:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-customer-is-always-right dept.

Facebook Inc. said it has uncovered several more flawed measurements related to how consumers interact with content, raising more questions about the metrics marketers lean on to decide whether to buy ads on the social media network.

The company publicly disclosed on Wednesday that a comprehensive internal metrics audit found that discrepancies, or "bugs," led to the undercounting or overcounting of four measurements, including the weekly and monthly reach of marketers' posts, the number of full video views and time spent with publishers' Instant Articles.

None of the metrics in question affect Facebook's billing, said Mark Rabkin, vice president of Facebook's core ads team.

[...] As part of its effort to assuage advertiser concerns about the soundness of its metrics, Facebook will provide viewability data from third-party metrics companies such as Moat and Integral Ad Science for display ad campaigns. Previously, this data was limited to video campaigns.

"We are doubling down on our efforts at third-party verification," said Carolyn Everson, Facebook's vice president of global marketing solutions.

Are Soylentils gratified that Facebook continues to be highly responsive to its customers? Is there a Facebook ad buy in your future? Or just an additional face-palm? Regardless of the issues, the product does seem to be selling like hotcakes.


Original Submission

Related Stories

Facebook Faked Viewer Metrics by as Much as 900% 9 comments

Facebook vastly exaggerated the number of viewers it had on its video platform in order to lure producers away from competing platforms like YouTube. Facebook's exaggerations were off by 150% to 900% from the actual figures, and apparently knew it at the time. Facebook is proposing a settlement of a meager $40 million to avoid facing larger penalties. Fines or not, these exaggerations — or more precisely, lies — contributed to crippling or eliminating several video-oriented areas of activity.

According to a brief in support of the settlement, Facebook would pay $40 million to resolve claims. Much of that would go to those who purchased ad time in videos, though $12 million — or 30 percent of the settlement fund — is earmarked for plaintiffs' attorneys.

The suit accused Facebook of acknowledging miscalculations in metrics upon press reports, but still not taking responsibility for the breadth of the problem. "The average viewership metrics were not inflated by only 60%-80%; they were inflated by some 150 to 900%," stated an amended complaint.

Earlier on SN:
Facebook Discloses Additional Advertising Metric Miscalculations (2016)


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @10:36AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @10:36AM (#428057)

    You are the Product.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday November 17 2016, @06:32PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Thursday November 17 2016, @06:32PM (#428249)

      Been over this already. You're the consumer.
      Your private life is the product. The customer is anyone who has money to buy your info.

      • (Score: 2) by black6host on Friday November 18 2016, @12:10AM

        by black6host (3827) on Friday November 18 2016, @12:10AM (#428511) Journal

        As of today, I'm not required to be a Facebook member. My argument is that there should never be a requirement that I agree to a third party's ever changing terms (Facebook in this example) in order to do business with or communicate with a company, person or any other entity not owned by that third party. And if they are owned, they're not getting my business or attention. Case in point: Peterson, which makes musical instrument tuners, sent me an email in 2012 that stated, in part, "After a decade of hosting our own forum, we are sad to report that we will be closing the Peterson Tuning forum indefinitely." with instructions to find them on Facebook. Never bought another product from them again. Never will.

        Soooo, so far I am neither the product nor consumer. Shhhh. I'd like to keep it that way.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @02:14AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @02:14AM (#428565)

          Soooo, so far I am neither the product nor consumer.

          Soooo, you're as good as dead. Unless advertising can reach you, you might as well not exist.

  • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Thursday November 17 2016, @12:40PM

    by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 17 2016, @12:40PM (#428080) Journal

    Is anyone here stupid enough to have a facebook account.?

    • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday November 17 2016, @01:25PM

      by Gaaark (41) on Thursday November 17 2016, @01:25PM (#428092) Journal

      What's this facebook you talk of? :)

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday November 17 2016, @03:39PM

      by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Thursday November 17 2016, @03:39PM (#428148)

      I have one with a fake identity that I use every now and then with TOR, to acces Facebook pages of companies that are too fucking lazy to have their own websites.

      As for friends who would only use Facebook and that I couldn't stay in touch with any other way, I don't have any: being naturally like-minded, my friends tend to dislike / distrust FB intensely, and we keep in touch the traditional, non- (or rather less-) privacy-invading ways.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @04:08PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @04:08PM (#428167)

        99 percent of my family/social circle is on Facebook. Out of the 1 percent that is not, only a few reliably socialize (and about half of those is whining.)

        Sadly as a non facebook user, it really lowers where you can go to socialize and meet people RL to hang out with, especially if you are avoiding assholes taking your picture and posting it on facebook, as almost everyone now is wont to do. What happened to respect for others right to privacy, or in lieu of that what happened to legal releases before photographing/using other's likenesses?

        • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday November 17 2016, @05:49PM

          by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday November 17 2016, @05:49PM (#428221) Journal

          > 99 percent of my family/social circle is on Facebook

          I was pushed onto Facebook. I sure didn't leap at the "opportunity" to have my very own Facebook account.

          Some of the pushing came from employers. One felt that as a social media company, it would be embarrassing if they didn't have a strong presence on social media, and extended that thinking into a requirement that all employees join Facebook. At least you didn't have to friend everyone in the company. And no, friending the boss wasn't even an unstated requirement, the boss didn't want to be buried with thousands of connections.

          At any rate, I seldom log in. I did try a stupid Facebook game once. When I saw it take it upon itself to shout the most trivial accomplishments from the virtual rooftops to every one of my connections, I was angry. Erased all connection to the game to shut it up and delete all the spam it generated. That's the sort of rough edge to be expected from new things, though spam is certainly not new and I thought Facebook would be smarter than that. Maybe they thought anyone who played a dumb game was dumb themselves and would want it to send out dumb spam.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @06:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @06:59PM (#428264)

      Is anyone here young enough to have a facebook account.?

      No. SoylentNews is old people. Tiny history lesson for you: when Slashdot modernized the user experience to align more closely with the social media crowd, all the old people left and came here instead.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @09:05PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @09:05PM (#428364)

        I am 23. Does that mean I'm old?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @09:41PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @09:41PM (#428401)

          Teenage wasteland
          It's only teenage wasteland

          Let's get together
          Before we get much older

          Teenage wasteland
          They're all wasted!