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Facebook will count one person as two on its platform

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Re: Facebook will count one person as two on its platform

#21
I'm curious how they would handle this with regards to lift tests. You can ask Facebook to not show your ads to faction of the addressable audience, and then calculate sales for the treated and control groups. If they don't make the randomization binding across platforms, it can several reduce the incrementality measurement (effectiveness of Facebook ads).

Re: Facebook will count one person as two on its platform

#22

It would not surprise me at all if this was done from a legal defensibility standpoint... if Facebook said that the accounts remain separate, but then it was discovered that they were for all intents and purposes linked behind the scenes, that's an even bigger problem. I wouldn't jump to an insidious conspiracy to boost impression #s a couple percent (given that it's not obvious to me this affects their billing at al…

Yes, I'd bet a large amount of money that this was done due to privacy compliance reasons.

Re: Facebook will count one person as two on its platform

#24
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An impression is counted as the number of times an instance of an ad is on screen for the first time. > If an ad is on screen for someone 2 different times in a day, that counts as 2 impressions. Facebook's website [0] says impressions aren't tied to accounts or persons and the explicitly provide an example how a single account (and person) could count 2 impressions. Can you please provide a source where Facebook s…

Here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1461718327429941?help... Thank you for pointing this out, though. The purpose of the article was to make people more aware of the change and how it can potentially mislead advertisers. I edited the section you quoted to make things more clear.

That does not look like the primary basis for billing, it's just a derived metric.

Re: Facebook will count one person as two on its platform

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you a hint: it starts with an M and rhymes with 'honey'.

Mummy..? I don't see what Egyptology has to do with this conversation.

Mummy doesn't rhyme with honey

Re: Facebook will count one person as two on its platform

#26
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An impression is counted as the number of times an instance of an ad is on screen for the first time. > If an ad is on screen for someone 2 different times in a day, that counts as 2 impressions. Facebook's website [0] says impressions aren't tied to accounts or persons and the explicitly provide an example how a single account (and person) could count 2 impressions. Can you please provide a source where Facebook s…

Here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1461718327429941?help... Thank you for pointing this out, though. The purpose of the article was to make people more aware of the change and how it can potentially mislead advertisers. I edited the section you quoted to make things more clear.

Advertisers are not paying for reach, they are paying for CPM and CPC. Advertisers are not double charged for clicks or impressions, because neither metric promises a unique person.

Facebook already documents this issue with their biz account vs personal accounts:

> For example, this means that if someone saw a post while using their business Page and then switched to their personal profile and saw the same post, we may count this as 2 people reached

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/283579896000936

Re: Facebook will count one person as two on its platform

#27
post #21

I'm curious how they would handle this with regards to lift tests. You can ask Facebook to not show your ads to faction of the addressable audience, and then calculate sales for the treated and control groups. If they don't make the randomization binding across platforms, it can several reduce the incrementality measurement (effectiveness of Facebook ads).

Just key the experiment diversion on the email address rather than an internal user ID. That way the experiment and control groups will be consistent across the apps, with the downside that a user changing their email might migrate between groups. But changing your email has to be a very rare operation.

Re: Facebook will count one person as two on its platform

#28

While I do support this change from a users' perspective, I find it hard to believe Facebook's official reason to "honor users' choices". What's the real motivation behind this Facebook update?

The cause is likely not money or goodwill: it’s legal privacy rulings. GDPR and the FCO ruling [1] have made it so cross-platform data (like the IG-FB data here to guess if two ad spend users are the same) isn’t allowed without explicit consent. My guess is that’s what’s driving this. [1]. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18215143/facebook-whatsapp...

This is the right answer. Matching user data without consent is becoming fairly risky from a data regulation standpoint, as well as user perception.

Re: Facebook will count one person as two on its platform

#29
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1461718327429941?help... Thank you for pointing this out, though. The purpose of the article was to make people more aware of the change and how it can potentially mislead advertisers. I edited the section you quoted to make things more clear.

Advertisers are not paying for reach, they are paying for CPM and CPC. Advertisers are not double charged for clicks or impressions, because neither metric promises a unique person. Facebook already documents this issue with their biz account vs personal accounts: > For example, this means that if someone saw a post while using their business Page and then switched to their personal profile and saw the same post, we…

Removed the price reference to focus on the article's main point. Honestly it's a bit frustrating when you've spent hours researching something and reached the HN front page to have someone tear you apart over a small speculation at the bottom of the piece. But that's HN, I guess.

Thank you for the correction.

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