Facebook Explains Its Latest Ad Metric Snafu

Advertising is a critical moneymaker for various media platforms, no less Facebook Inc FB. The company’s ad business brought in $7.9 billion in the first quarter of 2017, and present stock ratings depend on significant video ad revenue growth in the coming years.

The business branch is critical, both for Facebook and its clients. In September, the company caused an uproar when it recorded artificially inflated viewing metrics, charging advertisers for unmaterialized user interaction.

Now, it’s addressing new inaccuracies in its calculations.

Yet Another Ad Metric Snafu

The company recently detected a bug that mistakenly counted video carousel ad clicks as link clicks when tapped on smartphone mobile web browsers. The error was not seen on desktop or Facebook mobile apps, and it affected charges only for video carousel packages for which the advertiser bid on link clicks.

“In these cases, instead of being billed only for link clicks (clicks to an advertiser’s selected destination), these advertisers were incorrectly billed when people clicked on the videos in the carousel to enlarge and watch them,” a company press release explained. “Advertisers will receive a full credit for the charges they incurred for these misattributed clicks.”

Facebook assured that only 0.04 percent of ad impressions were affected, as most smartphone traffic comes through the app rather than web browsers, and the latter contributes only a small percentage of overall ad interactions.

At the time of publication, company shares were trading down 0.3 percent around $149.71.

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