Facebook increases transparency, buying options for advertisers, video ads

Transparency through verified data that shows which campaigns drive measurable results, choice in how advertisers run campaigns across our platforms, and accountability through an audit and third-party verification.

(c) Hermin Utomo - 123RF.com

Over the course of the year, Facebook will do the following:

More impression-level data

Its verification partners will receive more detailed information about ad impressions on Facebook and Instagram to help provide marketers with better insights. It will start providing specific in-view and duration data for display ads, including:

1. Milliseconds that an ad was on the screen.
   
2. Milliseconds that 50% of the ad was on the screen.
   
3. Milliseconds that 100% of the ad was on the screen.

Audit

It is committing to an audit by the Media Rating Council (MRC) to verify the accuracy of the information it delivers to its partners.

Third-party verification

It has been working closely with marketers to understand their measurement needs on key topics such as reach, attribution, audience demographics, brand lift, offline sales and mobile app measurement. Independent verification continues to expand and it now has 24 global third-party measurement partners so marketers can work with their preferred vendor.

New choices for video buying

It knows that the moment a video comes onto a person’s screen it creates value. However, it also knows that its partners have different campaign objectives and they want media-buying flexibility as they work to create meaningful and memorable campaigns.

Later this year, it will provide more choice for advertisers with three new buying options for video ads across Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network:

1. Completed-view buying: advertisers will only pay for video ads that have been viewed in their entirety, for any duration up to 10 seconds.

2. Two-second buying: compliant with the MRC video standard, where at least 50% of an ad’s pixels are in-view for two continuous seconds or longer.

3. Sound-on buying: advertisers will have the ability to buy sound-on video ads.

This is consistent with its approach over the last few years, where it has offered a number of new buying options to meet marketer needs, including TRP buying, reach and frequency, and cost-per-ten-second views.

It is confident that these new options, when combined with creative best practices for mobile, will help deliver well-crafted video ads to more people who will watch and take action.