Facebook had reported earlier that the company’s key metric of video viewer-ship significantly amplified users’ viewing times on its platform. Apparently, the metric for average user time on videos was artificially inflated as it only tallied videos viewed for over three seconds. The company issued a formal apology on Friday with regards to this error.
Initially, Facebook had said that this “discrepancy” did not affect advertising billings and even introduced newer metrics to replace the previous faulty method. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook informed Publicis Groupe SA’s advertising unit that older method inflated the average time spent watching videos by between 60 to 80 percent.
While this is only one of the many metrics marketers look at, we take any mistake seriously.
said David Fischer, vice president of business and marketing partnership at Facebook, said in a post on Friday.
Facebook’s video capabilities have seen a lot of advancement recently. This has essentially attracted significant advertising interest. The social giant has benefited a lot from the shift in advertising spending toward the internet and other mobile platforms. However, this recent fiasco is likely to turn at least some advertisers hostile, unless the social networking platform moves quickly to repair the damage.
The apology issued on Friday is certainly a good start. However, Facebook will also have to ensure that such mistakes and anomalies — if any other exist — are rooted out as quickly as possible. Advertisers flock to it because of the extreme potential Facebook, as the most used social networking platform in the world, displays. And the metrics provided by Facebook are some of the most commonly used measures of the impact of their content. If that metrics itself comes into question, well that is certainly going to shake things up.
Advertising revenue is currently the biggest driver to company’s total revenue. Revenue stands at $6.24 billion which also marks a 63 percent surge as compared to the last quarter. Meanwhile, the company’s stock prices registered a drop of around 1.63 percent, coming to rest at US$ 127.96.
