10 December 2016, USA :
Facebook has opened up about the mistakes it has been doing. The company said in a blog post that it has been miscalculating viewership metrics for advertisers. This is certainly not the first time Facebook has done this. They’ve openly accepted the same mistake twice before as BI reported.
Facebook stated, “To help advertisers get a better view of the number of people they can expect to reach with ads, this week we are updating how we calculate the numbers that appear in our estimated reach tool — found when creating an ad. When an advertiser begins creating a campaign, the tool provides them with an estimate of both the potential overall reach and the estimated daily reach of their ad campaign. Note that this tool does not reflect reach for campaigns that have already run, nor does it affect any other reach metrics.”
The company further added, “We’re improving our methodology for sampling and extrapolating potential audience sizes. This will help to provide a more accurate estimate for a given target audience and to better account for audiences across multiple platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network). In most cases, advertisers should expect to see less than a 10% change (increase or decrease) in the audience sizes shown in the tool.”
Facebook has found that there might be a difference between what these metrics count and what the mobile search query counts. It stated, “We are looking into why inputting the URL as a search query in Facebook’s mobile app might have corresponding numbers that can be higher or lower in certain cases. We are working to resolve this issue so that the Like and Share button metrics and our mobile search query metrics match up, and we will notify partners as soon as we have an update.”
Facebook also mentioned live video reaction miscalculation will be fixed by mid-December.
