Recent news has broken about the inaccurate reporting of video playback times on the Facebook platform. Facebook’s reporting suggested higher message playback than actually happened. In a post on the Facebook advertising help site, Facebook announced the discrepancy and explained the difference between how it defined the statistic, and what was actually measured.
We had previously defined the Average Duration of Video Viewed as “total time spent watching a video divided by the total number of people who have played the video.” But we erroneously had calculated the Average Duration of Video Viewed as “the total time spent watching a video divided by only the number of people who have viewed a video for three or more seconds.
New Changes In Place
Then in response to this discovery, Facebook says it’s introducing two new metrics in hopes to save face:
Video Average Watch Time: the total watch time for your video, divided by the total number of video plays. This includes plays that start automatically and on click. This will replace the Average Duration of Video Viewed metric.
Video Percentage Watched: reflects the percentage of your video somebody watches per session, averaged across all sessions of your video where the video auto-played or was clicked to play. This will replace the Average % Video Viewed metric.
What does this mean for you as an advertiser? It means that if you advertised on Facebook over the past couple of years you have likely been misled. You likely have an unrealistic ROI measure if you were using the “average duration of video views” metric. Most noteworthy is that Facebook is never aiming for a 100% playback of your video. The platform operates with distracted individuals in mind and is not the place to deliver a real ad message.
A Facebook Ad Alternative
Instead of playing back fractions of your video ads to viewers that may be largely irrelevant to your messaging, you could be utilizing It’s Relevant TV’s Advertising Platform. It’s Relevant TV puts your video messages on television in public places and only charges you for FULL PLAYBACKS. The price is about 1/100 of what standard TV ads cost. Advertisers can target by geographic location and business type.
For more information you can call the toll free office line: (855) ITS-RELE or visit online at: http://www.itsrelevant.com/advertising.
