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Facebook's Bad Math Raises Video Measurement QuestionsFacebook announced last Friday that it had identified an error in the way it calculated the "average duration of video viewed" metric. The average should have been calculated by dividing the total time spent watching a video by the number of people who watched it: Instead, Facebook only included the number of people who watched the video for more than three seconds. That method inflated the average. The company was quick to point out that it was one of several metrics used by Facebook to track video consumption on the site, and it is not a "billable event," i.e., the purchase of video advertising on Facebook is based on other metrics. Media agencies are not sold anything based on "average duration of video viewed." And as you would expect, the company has quickly taken steps to inform its customers, added clarifications via its dashboards and documentation, and is working to introduce a new metric that accurately reflects "average watch time." But this does raise questions about how Facebook measurement is conducted. At the recently concluded IBC convention, Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of the world's largest advertising network, WPP Group plc , once again complained about Facebook and Google's ad-measurement practices. WPP reportedly channeled $1 billion in advertising spend into the two companies last year, but has repeatedly said they are not sufficiently transparent in their ad measurement. He claimed they were trying to be "both players and referees" in this space. (See IBC 2016: The Last Word Part II.)
Facebook has tried to address this by partnering with a third-party analytics firm, Moat, and has opened up its platform to other Internet measurement firms such as The Nielsen Co. and comScore Inc. However, data from these companies is not always included, and it's worth noting that none of them identified this issue with average video duration previously. In any case, Facebook's measurement practices have come in for harsh criticism in the past. The company's decision to count a video as "viewed" after three seconds was called "ludicrous" by WPP's Sorrell. Competitors will often point to Facebook's practices when seeking to put their own services in a more positive light, as Erik Huggers, CEO of video hosting specialist Vevo, did during his keynote at IBC. (See IBC 2016: Vevo CEO Discusses New Direction .) A recent report from social media measurement firm Visible Measures compared viewing time measurement on Facebook and YouTube Inc. It found that Facebook registered a video view after three seconds of viewing versus 30 seconds of viewing time on YouTube. According to the measurement firm, a YouTube view represents ten times the viewing time on Facebook. Visible Measures also pointed out that on Facebook, the typical user video interaction is having a video play automatically as the user scrolls down their feed. But on YouTube video advertising is played within videos users deliberately choose to watch. Based on its study of video engagement data representing 37 million views, Visible Measures concluded that "YouTube generates an average viewing time of branded video advertising campaigns almost four times (3.6x) longer than Facebook." This inconsistency in measuring video view counts is frustrating for advertisers investing in these online media outlets. It requires more analysis, interpretation and estimation after the data is gathered and there are always doubts about the effectiveness and reach which this recent disclosure from Facebook will do nothing to help. More than half of the nearly $60 billion in US online spending is going to Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Facebook today, according to some estimates , but it's difficult to compare the value of a dollar spent on Facebook with one spent on Google -- or Twitter, Snapchat etc. There are also concerns about fraud, as there are ways to fool the measurement systems through automated "bots," that can be counted as views. The Association of National Advertisers estimates that these false "views" cost advertisers an eye-popping $7.2 billion annually. You'd think this would encourage companies such as Google and Facebook to be more transparent and demonstrate the real value of their reach. But user data is seen by these companies as their greatest asset, and they are loathe to share it. And that has been the greatest asset for pay-TV. Even though there are significant questions about the effectiveness of traditional TV advertising and what percentage is wasted, at least there is an established system of measurement in most parts of the world, which is consistent across all television channels. It takes a lot of the extra work out and uncertainty out of the process for media planners, making TV advertising attractive to agencies and advertisers alike. — Aditya Kishore, Practice Leader, Video Transformation, Telco Transformation |
Contentious issues that are likely to fuel lawsuits and angry blogs in the coming year.
Content producers are unhappy with the advertising approach and revenues they are getting on Facebook Watch.
OTT video usage is driving the penetration of various Internet connected devices to help view online streams on the larger TV screen.
Major Hollywood studio to trial 'virtual' movie theaters using head-mounted displays.
Network technology vendor Sandvine has found that piracy isn't only hurting network operator profits – each pirated set-top box is also using up 1TB per month in 'phantom bandwidth.'
On-the-Air Thursdays Digital Audio
ARCHIVED | December 7, 2017, 12pm EST
Orange has been one of the leading proponents of SDN and NFV. In this Telco Transformation radio show, Orange's John Isch provides some perspective on his company's NFV/SDN journey.
Special Huawei Video
Huawei Network Transformation Seminar The adoption of virtualization technology and cloud architectures by telecom network operators is now well underway but there is still a long way to go before the transition to an era of Network Functions Cloudification (NFC) is complete. |
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