Facebook apologizes for video miscalculation
Facebook publicly apologized to advertisers Friday after it revealed a miscalculation considerably inflated the average video view times presented in reports to marketers over several years.According to an official announcement from the company, a discrepancy was discovered in late August regarding how Facebook calculated the average number of views a video ad received.The company counted a video as viewed if a user watched it for more than three seconds.
Facebook inflated video traffic numbers over a 2-year period
Facebook inflated video traffic numbers over a 2-year periodBy VOA, Citizen DigitalFacebook has admitted that over a two-year time period, it overestimated the amount of time people spent on the site watching videos."We recently discovered an error in the way we calculate one of our video metrics," the company said in a statement."This error has been fixed, it did not impact billing, and we have notified our partners both through our product dashboards and via sales and publisher outreach."Also Read: Twitter begins discussions to explore a sale- sourceOne ad buying firm, Publicis Media, told The Wall Street Journal that the social media behemoth overestimated the amount by between 60 and 80 percent, calling the problem "unacceptable."Knowing how popular videos are is critical for advertisers to know what works and what doesn't.
Facebook miscalculated video numbers for two years
- Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesIn this advertisement from the Tex Mex restaurant Chuy's, the average view for the video was 100 percent.That means everyone who saw the ad supposedly watched it from start to end."I don't think it's mathematically possible," said Kristen Sussman, founder and president of social media agency, Social Distillery.
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