What you need to know about Facebook's metric mishaps & what's to come

Facebook is indubitably one of the most powerful marketing tools out there today. However, the media giant has admitted they found some bugs in their tools, causing some of their metrics to reflect incorrect numbers. Before you go to your Facebook analytics dashboard and find lower or surprising numbers, review the updates Facebook has made and will continue to be making in order to resolve these issues.

They released An Update on Metrics and Reporting to cover this in detail, but below are a few major points you'll want to know as a marketer. 

Flawed Dashboards in Page-Insights for Organic Reach 

Image Source: Facebook

Facebook explains how this miscalculation happened in their article, but in short:

• The reach number circled in red in the image above was incorrect – they were not calculatting duplicate visitors. They state that going forward, the 7-day summary view will be 33% lower on average and if you view the 28-day summary it will be about 55% lower
• The green circles illustrate that those numbers have been correct in the past and won't change

They are also changing the way reach counts are reflected (not a mistake in reporting, but still a stat that was misleading to marketers):

• Instead of impressions counting as times people refreshed their browser and your post showed up in their News Feed, impressions will only count for when the post is within the viewer's screen or is a "viewable impression"
• With this change, reports will reflect a number that is about 20% lower than what you may have seen previously

Video views may go up

Since video lengths can vary based on devices, some analytics were inaccurate. In a few cases, they undervalued how many people were actually watching a full video. There could be a 35% increase or so in how many people watch the videos to 100%.

Instant Articles average time spent will not be as high

Not as many marketers use the Instant Articles tool, but if you do, you should note Facebook found an error in how they find the average time spent reading the article. Now it's expected to fall 7-8%.

App Referrals overstated

Within Facebook Analytics for Apps Dashboard, reports were adding all clicks on the app's post page (whether they had to do with the post or not), rather than just the clicks to your app or website. This means the referrals will likely drop about 6%. 

Other Updates – not mistakes, just tweaks to match users' needs

• Interest lists are not popularly-used, so Facebook will retire this feature
• There will be more descriptive names to make sure metrics are clear in analytics ("video views" will now be "3-second video views," etc.)
• They will add updates to Canvas – now they will only calculate how much time is spent in Canvas rather than both in the feature and outside of it
• They will review their terminology across tip sections and glossaries to be more consistent
• Additional customization capabilities within reports will be developed – similar to Google Analytics, you will soon be able to choose which metrics you'd like to view based on what matters most to your Facebook goals

Remember to check out the full report from Facebook to get the details. You can also follow their updates on their blog.

Key Takeaways:

• Read the whole report like it's your job (because it is), and be sure to keep up with facebook's updates
• These were substantial errors in Facebook's reporting that confirmed the skepticism that they was being too optimistic. If you're reporting these numbers to clients or your boss, you can explain what happened in the past and what's coming next. 
• The overall good news is that Facebook is bringing a lot of critical energy to their dashboard, and soon we might have a platform with new features and better reporting. Plus they are now making the tool even better for the future and even opening up their data to third-parties to guarantee these metrics will be monitored objectively down the road. These reports will be getting more specific and the algorithm will be evolving into a better tool for marketers to reach the right person

If you need help with understanding any of this information, contact our team.