Facebook is finally admitting it needs help with numbers. The company announced in a blog post that it’s committing to an audit by the Media Rating Council in order to “verify the accuracy of the information we deliver to our partners.”
Facebook had a number of gaffes in the past year. There have been problems with reactions, search numbers, reach count, and a number of other metrics. It also under-reported traffic figures to analytics company comScore, causing the overall numbers for the ad publishers to diminish. You can read a complete list of Facebook’s mistakes here.
Ads are important to Facebook, making up more than 97-percent of the company’s revenue. In an earnings report released earlier this year, Facebook revealed that its ad revenue had risen by 53-percent. Most of that was from mobile ads, like the ones it’s adding to Messenger.
In the same blog post, Facebook announced new options for buying video ads. Partners can buy sound-on ads, or pay only for ads watched to completion.
It also laid out plans to give more detailed information to its partners regarding ads on Facebook and Instagram, including the milliseconds of time an ad is on screen. Given that another of its mistakes from last year was overestimating video metrics, this new precision sounds like another part of its plan to regain partner trust.
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