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What's New with Facebook Video Metrics?

By Tinuiti Team

Increased video consumption in recent years has fueled strong growth in video-driven digital advertising. Because advertisers rely heavily on video performance for campaign effectiveness, it is more important than ever for you to gain strong insights into the success of your video-based campaigns.

Realizing the need for improved data access, Facebook has revised several of its video metrics to deliver better analytics reports. The following is an overview of key details about these changes to help advertisers plan for upcoming campaigns.

Eliminate of Duplicate Counting

Historically, repeat views from the same user on a 3-second or 10-second Facebook video ad have been counted as multiple ad impressions. Thus, the advertiser couldn't distinguish between impressions generated from a single user rewatching a video ten times and ten separate users each watching the video once. One important new change is the elimination of this potential duplication, which has been a primary frustration among advertisers.

Now, regardless of how many times a single user rewinds and rewatches a video, the ad metrics will indicate one view from this interaction.

Video Play versus Video Impressions

Until now, video ads that run on auto-play in a user's news feed have generated impressions whether the ad played in its entirety or not. Again, advertisers have complained about limited insight into how many complete video plays their campaigns generate.

Among its updates, Facebook is going to provide advertisers with separate metrics for video plays versus video impressions. The video play metric allows more accurate insight into how many times users watched the entire video. The video impressions measurement identifies all exposures to the video, whether it plays through or not. There are some benefits to knowing the total impressions, as even brief exposures to the brand messaging can produce some benefit.

Removal of Outdated Metrics

The company is also eliminating some metrics from its analytics reporting that are no longer useful to advertisers in evaluating campaign performance. The eliminated measurements include the percentage of video watched and 30-second video view.

These data points are no longer necessary due to an emphasis on shorter video content and the separation of reporting for ad plays and impressions. Instead, Facebook offers the previously described video play and impression metrics for its 2-second, 3-second and 10-second ad formats. 

Third-Party Ad Measurement

In light of recent controversy surrounding some of Facebook's business activities and advertising reporting practices, users desire more transparency via third-party ad reporting. Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify now offer external data on video ad performance on Facebook, and it is expected that more third-party vendors will fill this important role for advertisers.

Conclusion

These changes to Facebook video metrics are welcomed news for online advertisers. Gain greater insights into the overall optimization of your video ads by leveraging the new and improved reports.

For more insights, read the Ultimate Guide to Scaling your Facebook Advertising!

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