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Facebook Math Social Networks

Facebook Discloses New Measurement Errors, Continues To Hone Its Math (marketingland.com) 36

An anonymous reader shares an article on MarketingLand: For the third time since September, Facebook is disclosing new measurement errors. The two new errors affected the reaction counts Facebook reports on Pages' Live videos, as well as the engagement figures Facebook reports for off-Facebook links; the latter link engagement metrics were recently used in investigations by BuzzFeed and The New York Times into fake news articles' performance on Facebook. In addition to acknowledging the two new errors -- of which one has been corrected and one is still being inspected -- Facebook has refined a measurement marketers may reference when buying ads through the social network. None of the aforementioned metrics had any impact on how much money Facebook charges advertisers for their campaigns. But they may have informed brands' Facebook ad-buying strategies as well as brands', publishers' and others' Facebook-related content-publishing strategies.
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Facebook Discloses New Measurement Errors, Continues To Hone Its Math

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  • by I4ko ( 695382 )

    Last sentence makes no sense. They have informed of what?

    • Last sentence makes no sense. They have informed of what?

      When they say "they informed... ad-buying strategies", they're saying that the erroneous metrics were used by companies to make strategic decisions, which may now turn out to be invalid.

  • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @11:45AM (#53452849)
    It doesn't really matter how Facebook measures engagement and so on, much bigger problem is complete lack of results of all social media advertising. This is not 1-2% response ineffective, this is 10^-20 ineffective. It is quite likely that the entire Facebook advertising haven't sold a single thing today.
    • The local garage sale groups in my area do pretty well though. It's probably the only regular use I get out of Facebook these days.
      • by rikkards ( 98006 )

        My wife got better results with her business using Facebook advertising than Google's adwords.
        That said my biggest annoyance with FB is the sale groups. Once I see them, if I don't add them and X them out, I don't want to see them again, same with suggested pages. The first I am pretty confident there is no monetary gain for FB other than potentially more use of their app (IOW no direct money for access), latter not so sure.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I worked on a retail eCommerce site for a while (five below) and they made bank on Facebook. It helps that their target market is teen girls and they sell shit that's only a few dollars, but it was super effective for them.

      Also there was this one girl from finance that thought we couldn't hear when she farted, but we could hear. we could hear.

    • by garcia ( 6573 )

      I work in the marketing analytics and attribution space and can confidently speak to this topic. While Social isn't the BEST performer, it doesn't carry with it the dire statement of a "complete lack of results" as you state.

      With dependencies on vertical and how the advertising is used in known conjunction with other channels, Social definitely does have an assister effect on those other channels. The problem you may be encountering is relying solely on outdated analysis methods which do not appropriately t

      • by sinij ( 911942 )
        Yes, that what all snake oil salespeople tell me - you are not measuring results right. Until you can measure "assisster effect" it is just as imaginary as Santa Claus.

        Yes, my original statement was generalization. There are few industries, like luxury accessories, that could benefit from social media. On other hand, if you are, for example, selling refrigerators or accounting software you need not bother.
    • It doesn't really matter how Facebook measures engagement and so on, much bigger problem is complete lack of results of all social media advertising. This is not 1-2% response ineffective, this is 10^-20 ineffective. It is quite likely that the entire Facebook advertising haven't sold a single thing today.

      Bullshit.
      My wife's store get the best result by far through Facebook advertising. Better than Google. Better than the local papers. It's measurable.

  • too busy on Facebook, I guess.

    (oh dear... looks like its going to be cheese and corn on the cob for dinner tonight!)

  • Oh, really? Please, the day will come when tech companies, although full of great ideas, they will falter. FB has been on my target list forever. Being fair, social media is the entity on my list. Remember MySpace anyone? The day will come when the darling is no longer the darling. RIP FB.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Never trust ad platform metrics that you didn't measure yourself.

  • Is this a question of honing or manipulation?
  • You mean my ad hasn't been seen by 10 billion people in the last month?
  • Facebook: "Lol, ooops, we overcharged you, our bad, sorry, no refunds."

  • It's not a measurement, it's a count. And it's fucked up for 1 of 2 reasons (or both):

    A: Facebook lied to sell more ads and make more money, or was incompetent with the queries but didn't care (because they want to sell more ads and make more money).
    Solution: LOL.

    B: Facebook uses shitty bigdata nosql non relational horseshit instead of a proper relational database.
    Solution: Use something sane, like SQL. You can trivially get a count of how many people have seen an ad and how many have clicked it, with

    • Nothing you've described cannot be performed accurately using nosql. Are you demonstrating an ignorance or a bias?

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