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Facebook Hiring ‘Third Party’ After Misleading Advertisers Again

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Eric Lieberman Managing Editor
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Facebook is promising to revamp how it measures advertisements on its website after it was discovered the social media company made even more miscalculations.

Facebook was forced to apologize in September for inflating the average viewing time for video ads. Now, the tech corporation is accused of overestimating the seven-day and 28-day outreach for advertisers’ posts by not accounting for repeat visitors.

“This bug has been live since May; we will be fixing this in the next few weeks. It does not affect paid reach,” Facebook claimed in an official blog post.

Facebook also has been undercounting video data for clips that are watched in their entirety — a metric it calls “video watches at 100%.”

“This may result in roughly a 35% increase in the count of ‘video watches at 100%,'” the social media company explained.

The company said it will restructure and upgrade its marketing and overall video content metrics through a number of different means, including “Increased Third-Party Verification” and “Regular and Clearer Communication on Metrics.”

Facebook said it’s partnering with Nielsen, a global data measurement company, in order to hone calculation skills. It will increase transparency by implementing “a new internal review process” and reporting on updates it makes to any metrics or quantification systems.

The annual revenue for Facebook in 2012 totaled $5.09 billion and $7.8 billion in 2013, reports Business Management. The tech conglomerate somewhat relies on advertising for its earnings, and thus often works on advertising strategies.

Facebook announced in early August it would update its marketing tactics in order to give users more “control [over] their advertising experience,” which some interpreted as a way to sidestep ad-blocking software.

Legal experts alleged that Facebook is infringing upon civil rights laws after ProPublica, a journalism nonprofit, discovered it provided an option to “EXCLUDE people” based on certain “Demographics” like “Ethnic Affinity.” A class action lawsuit — which Facebook claims is absolutely unfounded — was filed in California earlier this month over this potential infraction.

While Facebook adamantly opposed the assertions that it is violating the law, it seemingly conceded the fact that it needs to improve how it measures marketing capabilities.

“These efforts are long-term investments, and we’ll continue to share updates on the Metrics FYI blog,” the social media company concluded in its post.

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