Facebook Bungles Video Metric
Big ad buyers and marketers are fuming after Facebook admitted it had vastly over-estimated average viewing time for video ads on its platform for the past two years.
Ad buying agency Publicis Media was told by Facebook that the earlier counting method probably over-estimated average time spent watching videos by between 60 and 80 percent, according to a letter Publicis Media sent to clients.
On Friday, Facebook issued a mea culpa. “The metric should have reflected the total time spent watching a video divided by the total number of people who played the video. But it didn’t,” said David Fischer, VP of business and marketing partnerships, in a Facebook post.
“While this is only one of the many metrics marketers look at, we take any mistake seriously.”