The Association of National Advertisers is calling on Facebook to step up its game in terms of being more transparent with its advertising metrics the watchdog group announced yesterday.
While the ANA acknowledges Facebook’s problems with how it reports its metrics and the fact that it gave marketers an inflated number for the average time spent viewing online clips could have been a “mistake”, it is still calling on the social media giant to be audited and accredited by the Media Rating Council.
ANA President-CEO Bob Liodice said in a statement:
[su_quote]While ANA recognizes that ‘mistakes do happen,’ we also recognize that Facebook has not yet achieved the level of measurement transparency that marketers need and require. Specifically, Facebook metrics are not accredited by the Media Rating Council (MRC); accordingly an audit of Facebook metrics has not been completed.[/su_quote]
Liodice also said that $6 billion of marketers’ media are being directed to Facebook, making the case even stronger that it, like “other such major media players,” should be audited and accredited.
“That is the standard of accepted practice that marketers and agencies have relied on for decades.”
Last week, Facebook apologized for having boosted viewing figures by counting a video as “viewed” if it had been seen for more than three seconds –whether it had or not.
David Fischer, Facebook’s VP-business and marketing partnerships then apologized in a statement last Friday: “As soon as we discovered the discrepancy, we fixed it. We informed our partners and made sure to put a notice in the product itself so that anyone who went into their dashboard could understand our error.”
It would seem the ANA is saying that is not enough, and that Facebook must open up and allow their advertising model and methods to be held to the traditional standards.
