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On my programmer hand, I can see myself making a similar technical choice. We have auto-playing videos, we shouldn't count the views less than 3 seconds because

On my programmer hand, I can see myself making a similar technical choice. We have auto-playing videos, we shouldn't count the views less than 3 seconds because that wasn't really an intentional view. But that means we should also exclude them from the overall view count. I don't know if FB did that as well. On my shareholder hand, this seems slightly like fraud. On my advertiser foot, this seems slightly like fraud.

karmel 10y ago
One wonders whether this was an intentional filter to avoid scans of the video that shouldn't count as watching, or just a bug – some deeply nested, vestigial filter that everybody forgot about until some random engineer stumbled across it...
daveguy 10y ago
That is an important question that wasn't clear in the article. If they counted those sub 3 sec views in the count but not in the duration then it would definitely be fraudulent. If they didn't include sub 3 sec in the count or in the average then it is a valid technical decision. I am guessing they were included in the count but not in the duration. They should have a histogram of durations.
- arcticfox 10y ago
  That distinction makes all the difference to me. IMO one answer is fraud and the other is borderline valid / no big deal.
- dismantlethesun 10y ago
  It looks like they didn't count it in either metric. Peoples' complaint is that they excluded it from all averages and all reports, which inflates their average duration of video watched because videos less than 3 seconds aren't included at all.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  > If they counted those sub 3 sec views in the count but not in the duration It sounds like this was exactly what was happening. From the article: "Video views of under three seconds were not factored in, thereby inflating the average. Video views of under three seconds were not factored in, thereby inflating the average. Facebook’s new metric, “Average Watch Time”, will reflect video views of any duration."
nol13 10y ago
See just get rid of the auto-playing videos problem solved, and make the world a better place while you're at it.
- colejohnson66 10y ago
  I bet Facebook gets a decent enough amount from people who scroll, look away for a second, video starts playing, then user pauses video, but not before the 3 second mark. What really should be done is getting rid of auto playing videos at the HTML spec level. While there are legitimate uses for autoplaying videos (YouTube for example), it has too much potential for abuse by ad networks.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    Advertisers will find a workaround and it will inevitably be much worse for the user. In the following talk, someone from the Google Chrome team describes how, when they tried to not autoplay videos on Android, video advertisers worked around the restriction by compiling video codecs to JavaScript and then rendering their video-like ads to an HTML canvas. https://youtu.be/wQGa_6CRc9I?t=23m52s https://youtu.be/wQGa_6CRc9I?t=23m52s
    - colejohnson66 10y ago
      That's where NoScript comes in
      - NoGravitas 10y ago
        Or blocking 3rd party scrips with uBlock.
    - raverbashing 10y ago
      Don't ad networks charge for ad size as well? (or they should start charging for this - would cut on abuse) If your ad is > 50k then you're paying a fee per display, even if you're "pay per click"
  - 10y ago
mod 10y ago
On my programmer hand, if I made the cutoff 3 seconds for the metrics, I would make it 3 seconds to count a view. If the metrics and the view counts match, I don't see a problem. If they calculate the average for > 3 seconds, but count EVERY view, I agree--fraudish.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  This sort of Windsorizing will inflate the average anyway. Making decisions based on "average" view time is still silly.
  - luiscarloscb 10y ago
    Why would it be silly? If I have an ad that has double the average view time than other wouldn't it make sense to invest more in it and less in the second one?
    - LeifCarrotson 10y ago
      The distribution is what they really need to include. The average view time doesn't mean much when the distribution is super skewed, which it's likely to be for these ads. If 0.1% watch all 30 seconds, 0.9% watch to 28 seconds and quit at the credits, and the rest all watch 0.2 seconds as they scroll through, that tells you something that "Average watch time = 0.5 seconds" doesn't tell you. Especially if last week, no one watched the whole thing, but a bunch of people watched for 2 seconds and then quit, and your average was 0.9 seconds.

karmel 10y ago

One wonders whether this was an intentional filter to avoid scans of the video that shouldn't count as watching, or just a bug – some deeply nested, vestigial filter that everybody forgot about until some random engineer stumbled across it...

daveguy 10y ago

That is an important question that wasn't clear in the article. If they counted those sub 3 sec views in the count but not in the duration then it would definitely be fraudulent. If they didn't include sub 3 sec in the count or in the average then it is a valid technical decision. I am guessing they were included in the count but not in the duration. They should have a histogram of durations.

arcticfox 10y ago
That distinction makes all the difference to me. IMO one answer is fraud and the other is borderline valid / no big deal.
dismantlethesun 10y ago
It looks like they didn't count it in either metric. Peoples' complaint is that they excluded it from all averages and all reports, which inflates their average duration of video watched because videos less than 3 seconds aren't included at all.
prostoalex 10y ago
> If they counted those sub 3 sec views in the count but not in the duration It sounds like this was exactly what was happening. From the article: "Video views of under three seconds were not factored in, thereby inflating the average. Video views of under three seconds were not factored in, thereby inflating the average. Facebook’s new metric, “Average Watch Time”, will reflect video views of any duration."

nol13 10y ago

See just get rid of the auto-playing videos problem solved, and make the world a better place while you're at it.

colejohnson66 10y ago
I bet Facebook gets a decent enough amount from people who scroll, look away for a second, video starts playing, then user pauses video, but not before the 3 second mark. What really should be done is getting rid of auto playing videos at the HTML spec level. While there are legitimate uses for autoplaying videos (YouTube for example), it has too much potential for abuse by ad networks.
- cpeterso 10y ago
  Advertisers will find a workaround and it will inevitably be much worse for the user. In the following talk, someone from the Google Chrome team describes how, when they tried to not autoplay videos on Android, video advertisers worked around the restriction by compiling video codecs to JavaScript and then rendering their video-like ads to an HTML canvas. https://youtu.be/wQGa_6CRc9I?t=23m52s https://youtu.be/wQGa_6CRc9I?t=23m52s
  - colejohnson66 10y ago
    That's where NoScript comes in
    - NoGravitas 10y ago
      Or blocking 3rd party scrips with uBlock.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    Don't ad networks charge for ad size as well? (or they should start charging for this - would cut on abuse) If your ad is > 50k then you're paying a fee per display, even if you're "pay per click"
- 10y ago

mod 10y ago

On my programmer hand, if I made the cutoff 3 seconds for the metrics, I would make it 3 seconds to count a view. If the metrics and the view counts match, I don't see a problem. If they calculate the average for > 3 seconds, but count EVERY view, I agree--fraudish.

AstralStorm 10y ago
This sort of Windsorizing will inflate the average anyway. Making decisions based on "average" view time is still silly.
- luiscarloscb 10y ago
  Why would it be silly? If I have an ad that has double the average view time than other wouldn't it make sense to invest more in it and less in the second one?
  - LeifCarrotson 10y ago
    The distribution is what they really need to include. The average view time doesn't mean much when the distribution is super skewed, which it's likely to be for these ads. If 0.1% watch all 30 seconds, 0.9% watch to 28 seconds and quit at the credits, and the rest all watch 0.2 seconds as they scroll through, that tells you something that "Average watch time = 0.5 seconds" doesn't tell you. Especially if last week, no one watched the whole thing, but a bunch of people watched for 2 seconds and then quit, and your average was 0.9 seconds.