Facebook announces updates to metrics, reporting

It is updating its metrics to give its partners and the industry more clarity and confidence about the insights it provides.

Increased third-party verification

We believe strongly in third-party verification to prove the business value we are driving for our partners, and we have a long history of working with global industry leaders like comScore, Moat, Nielsen and Integral Ad Science (IAS). We are now exploring additional third-party reviews to validate the reporting we offer partners. We are also launching the ability to verify display impression data through our third-party viewability verification partners, including Moat, IAS and comScore. This integration addresses requests we have received from partners for independent measurement of the amount of time ads are viewed on-screen.

For publishers, we are partnering with Nielsen to include Facebook video and Facebook Live viewership in Nielsen's Digital Content Ratings (DCR). This will give publishers access to third-party verification for video metrics and allow for comparable digital and TV metrics in Nielsen's Total Audience Measurement.

Building more measurement solutions with our clients

Our global Client Council has helped shape the direction of our products and how we approach measurement. Innovations such as conversion lift and mobile polling came out of direct conversations with our Client Council members. Given the Council's valuable insights and the growing need for measurement standards tied to business outcomes, we are now working with its members and other business and measurement executives to form a Measurement Council. We will announce more details in the coming weeks.

Regular and clearer communication on metrics

We have created a new internal review process to ensure our metrics are clear and up to date as our product offerings continue to evolve. As part of this process, we will be communicating more regularly about updates we make. Communication will occur in a few ways, some of which are already happening:

1. In-product definitions, as we have routinely done in the past, we will continue to include updates in-product where partners buy ads or access our reporting. When we make meaningful updates going forward, we will continue surfacing them in-product.

2. Through our client teams, we will continue to communicate important updates to metrics that impact our partners directly through our partner teams.

3. Metrics FYI blog. We know how important it is to be open about meaningful updates we make to our metrics, so we are creating a new channel for regular information on metrics enhancements. (This blog will be similar to our News Feed FYI blog.)