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Facebook Finds More Ad-Metric Errors, Vows Clarity About Fixes (bloomberg.com)

Facebook said today it has uncovered more miscalculated metrics related to how consumers interact with content from publishers. From an article on Bloomberg, submitted by an anonymous reader: The social-networking company conducted a broad review after discovering three months ago that it had overstated how long people watched videos on its site. The miscalculation wasn't broadly disclosed, sparking some criticism of the social network. Now, Facebook says it has found four other instances where it miscalculated reach on its site, including overstating how long people spent reading Instant Articles and how many people interacted with businesses' Facebook Pages. Companies and marketers rely on Facebook to tell them how well the content they post is performing, so that they can make strategic decisions about what to do next and how much to invest through advertising or otherwise. To avoid future errors, the company said it's establishing a measurement council made up of top advertisers and partners. Facebook will also allow more third party measurement companies such as Nielsen to track and supplement its metrics. Additionally, Facebook is revising the descriptions for its data to explain exactly what they measure, for example reporting "3-second video views" instead of just "video views."

11 comments

  1. As usual... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As usual, don't forget: you are the product.

  2. Uh yeah by Monoman · · Score: 2

    From my perspective it looks like a significant percentage FB users share links without bothering to read the linked page or considering it as a valid source. They simple share things based on emotion. I have seen this from politically "charged" people on both sides. So either my FB social network behavior is rare or a typical. I strongly suspect it is the later and FB knows it.

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  3. Facebook is a marketing company first by JoeyRox · · Score: 2

    And a technology company second. This explains why their engineers are making basic math mistakes in critical business algorithms. Where is the peer review on these? The QA?

  4. Imagine that by Nunya666 · · Score: 1

    Wow, a company that depends on advertising income misrepresented the volume of their readership.

    In other news, a wolf was seen eating some sheep.

    1. Re:Imagine that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      don't worry, i'm sure their lying has absolutely nothing to do with inflating share value. a public, for profit company would never, ever do something like that.

  5. I fix it for you facebook (by removing ads) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No ads = no problem via APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...

    Ads rob speed, security (malvertising) & privacy (tracking).

    Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.

    Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.

    Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & ads = 40% of it.

    Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus (slows you) + less security issues/complexity.

    Compliments firewalls (blocking less used IP addys vs. hosts blocking more used domains) & DNS (lightens dns load).

    Gets data via 10 security sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/... (Verified by Malwarebytes' S. Burn "seen the code & it's safe" http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... )

  6. What facebook is: by fubarrr · · Score: 2

    Facebook.com - world's biggest clickfraud ring

    1. Re:What facebook is: by Monoman · · Score: 1

      ^^^ This

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  7. Not that I care for ad publishers.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But isn't this a sneaky way of saying we committed fraud?

  8. This is not news, its hand waving by Joviex · · Score: 1

    They knew all this beforehand, regardless of what they "discovered".

    People were literally screaming it on TVs, blasting tweets directly to them, etc... for months.

    I can wave my hands too, for my favorite sports teams.
    Facebook is not a sports teams.
    Fuck you, FB.