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It's not overblown if you're lying to advertisers about the quality of impressions their ads received, and lying to investors about it too...especially when you

It's not overblown if you're lying to advertisers about the quality of impressions their ads received, and lying to investors about it too...especially when your stock has rocketed to making Facebook easily in the top 10 largest corporations in the world. Not only that but Facebook actively brags about video impressions in their conference calls. This is fraud. I think this is something that should be investigated by the SEC to be perfectly honest. Doesn't mean they should be charged, just investigated; because if they are misreporting this, what other metrics are they misreporting to shareholders?

emcq 10y ago
What specifically is the lie here? That they report average view time without trivial views? That seems like a more useful metric. You also can't really directly compare these simple metrics across sites as they don't get at customer lifetime value. With these simple metrics you run into problems where the average video view may be higher on site A, but the average spend for users is higher on site B, and simply following the metric will lead you to an ineffective campaign. Whose responsibility is it to effectively manage an advertising campaign? While I agree that more oversight and transparency is welcome here, I think jumping out and calling it fraud is exactly the kind of reaction that makes me feel this is overblown.
- Bjartr 10y ago
  The one thing that would make it misleading is if they reported the average time excluding views under 3 seconds, but reported impressions including them. From the article it is not clear that this is the case
  - adevine 10y ago
    I think your comment is the key one. I actually don't see a problem at all with what they've reported IF they also separately excluded views under 3 seconds from their total count of views (i.e. the denominator). If they included them in view count, I would think a lawsuit would be warranted.
  - shostack 10y ago
    This is the piece I've been digging for info on. The dimensions to break out reporting columns for various view duration percentages has always existed. Any advertiser worth their salt is looking at the breakdown for stats on meaningful views because out outside of cases where your message is delivered in a couple seconds you typically only care about longer views and would just look at those numbers. So the question is how deep this polluted other metrics.
- jaxn 10y ago
  Brick and mortal local retailer here. I spend over $100,000 annually on advertising in my local market. That is all digital at this point. Facebook video is a significant chunk. The lie is about the effectiveness of video on Facebook. I directed a fair amount of additional ad spend to Facebook precisely because Facebook users on average seemed to be giving a lot of attention to videos on the platform, even if they were promoted. It actually seemed like there was finally something that could work to replace the kind of lift we would see from TV advertising 5-10 years ago. This calls that into question (which may be putting it mildly). It also calls into question all of the other metrics Facebook provides advertisers.
  - imh 10y ago
    What did they define the metric as prior to this 3 second revelation?
  - geon 10y ago
    If the ads boosts sales, use them. The speciffic number seconds they are shown is irrelevant. You will have to do your own analytics anyway.
    - jaxn 10y ago
      See my reply to the comment above. With local retail, you can't just measure the conversion rate. It is not about the specific number of seconds. It is about the implied engagement and focus of the audience. It is about a reported difference in the behavior of Facebook users vs other online properties.
      - geon 10y ago
        You never can. But are you just going to blindly spend money on ads and just believe they work?
        jaxn 10y ago
        Yeah, that is basically the entire advertising industry. Precisely what "brand exposure" is.
- Asooka 10y ago
  As far as I understand it, what happens is that views under 3 seconds aren't counted towards the average. So if you have 999 999 views of <1 second each and 1 view of 3 seconds, the reported average is 3 seconds / 1 view = average view time of 3 seconds, while the true average is something like 500 000 seconds / 1 000 000 views.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    So they would report that hypothetical as "999 999 views; 3s average"?
grandalf 10y ago
> quality of impressions their ads received I don't disagree, but FWIW the ads still had better ROI than Facebook's competitors, so the oversight (while embarrassing) may not have actually changed the willingness of ad buyers to pay for ads.
- harry8 10y ago
  Better ROI than competitors. Did facebook tell you that?
  - cm2012 10y ago
    Any modern advertiser knows their ROI from different channels. As a big FB spender, this doesn't effect us at all.
    - languagewars 10y ago
      FB has more information about other channels than you do, I.e. for all you know they have algorithms favoring users to see FB ads that are on path that usually leads to your site based on FB pixel tracking. Then all the multi-attribution ROI of FB is nonsenses but you have no idea. I'm not saying they are doing that, I am saying be especially careful with anyone in advertising who is misleading and who doesn't try to protect their reputation by being exact in what they say.
      - madeofpalk 10y ago
        Regardless, dollar for dollar, if people are seeing bigger conversions or returns it doesn't matter whether they came from display advertising or 'organic content'. If they buy something, who cares?
        harry8 10y ago
        If you have independent metrics of your own spend, then no, facebook didn't tell you. But you'd have had to have had similar spends in similar ways with all their competitors to know that.
delecti 10y ago
> quality of impressions their ads received My understanding is that they only counted it as an impression if it was a view for at least 3 seconds. If anything, including non-impression views is lying about the quality of impressions their ads received, because they're not impressions. I don't know if that's how video ad impression data is normally reported, but it sure sounds more intuitive to me.

emcq 10y ago

What specifically is the lie here? That they report average view time without trivial views? That seems like a more useful metric. You also can't really directly compare these simple metrics across sites as they don't get at customer lifetime value. With these simple metrics you run into problems where the average video view may be higher on site A, but the average spend for users is higher on site B, and simply following the metric will lead you to an ineffective campaign. Whose responsibility is it to effectively manage an advertising campaign? While I agree that more oversight and transparency is welcome here, I think jumping out and calling it fraud is exactly the kind of reaction that makes me feel this is overblown.

Bjartr 10y ago
The one thing that would make it misleading is if they reported the average time excluding views under 3 seconds, but reported impressions including them. From the article it is not clear that this is the case
- adevine 10y ago
  I think your comment is the key one. I actually don't see a problem at all with what they've reported IF they also separately excluded views under 3 seconds from their total count of views (i.e. the denominator). If they included them in view count, I would think a lawsuit would be warranted.
- shostack 10y ago
  This is the piece I've been digging for info on. The dimensions to break out reporting columns for various view duration percentages has always existed. Any advertiser worth their salt is looking at the breakdown for stats on meaningful views because out outside of cases where your message is delivered in a couple seconds you typically only care about longer views and would just look at those numbers. So the question is how deep this polluted other metrics.
jaxn 10y ago
Brick and mortal local retailer here. I spend over $100,000 annually on advertising in my local market. That is all digital at this point. Facebook video is a significant chunk. The lie is about the effectiveness of video on Facebook. I directed a fair amount of additional ad spend to Facebook precisely because Facebook users on average seemed to be giving a lot of attention to videos on the platform, even if they were promoted. It actually seemed like there was finally something that could work to replace the kind of lift we would see from TV advertising 5-10 years ago. This calls that into question (which may be putting it mildly). It also calls into question all of the other metrics Facebook provides advertisers.
- imh 10y ago
  What did they define the metric as prior to this 3 second revelation?
- geon 10y ago
  If the ads boosts sales, use them. The speciffic number seconds they are shown is irrelevant. You will have to do your own analytics anyway.
  - jaxn 10y ago
    See my reply to the comment above. With local retail, you can't just measure the conversion rate. It is not about the specific number of seconds. It is about the implied engagement and focus of the audience. It is about a reported difference in the behavior of Facebook users vs other online properties.
    - geon 10y ago
      You never can. But are you just going to blindly spend money on ads and just believe they work?
      - jaxn 10y ago
        Yeah, that is basically the entire advertising industry. Precisely what "brand exposure" is.
Asooka 10y ago
As far as I understand it, what happens is that views under 3 seconds aren't counted towards the average. So if you have 999 999 views of <1 second each and 1 view of 3 seconds, the reported average is 3 seconds / 1 view = average view time of 3 seconds, while the true average is something like 500 000 seconds / 1 000 000 views.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  So they would report that hypothetical as "999 999 views; 3s average"?

grandalf 10y ago

> quality of impressions their ads received I don't disagree, but FWIW the ads still had better ROI than Facebook's competitors, so the oversight (while embarrassing) may not have actually changed the willingness of ad buyers to pay for ads.

harry8 10y ago
Better ROI than competitors. Did facebook tell you that?
- cm2012 10y ago
  Any modern advertiser knows their ROI from different channels. As a big FB spender, this doesn't effect us at all.
  - languagewars 10y ago
    FB has more information about other channels than you do, I.e. for all you know they have algorithms favoring users to see FB ads that are on path that usually leads to your site based on FB pixel tracking. Then all the multi-attribution ROI of FB is nonsenses but you have no idea. I'm not saying they are doing that, I am saying be especially careful with anyone in advertising who is misleading and who doesn't try to protect their reputation by being exact in what they say.
    - madeofpalk 10y ago
      Regardless, dollar for dollar, if people are seeing bigger conversions or returns it doesn't matter whether they came from display advertising or 'organic content'. If they buy something, who cares?
      - harry8 10y ago
        If you have independent metrics of your own spend, then no, facebook didn't tell you. But you'd have had to have had similar spends in similar ways with all their competitors to know that.

delecti 10y ago

> quality of impressions their ads received My understanding is that they only counted it as an impression if it was a view for at least 3 seconds. If anything, including non-impression views is lying about the quality of impressions their ads received, because they're not impressions. I don't know if that's how video ad impression data is normally reported, but it sure sounds more intuitive to me.