With a continued focus to improve on its
reporting metrics, Facebook has quietly made further changes to rename its metrics and definitions related to
advertising measurements. The move aims to increase consistency and clarity around the data it measures. The changes will begin rolling out Tuesday to advertisers.
Words like "Account" will
update to "Account Name," "Starts" will change to "Campaign Starts," and "Cost per All Actions" will update to "Cost per Any Action."
While most of the name changes are subtle, each word in
the name aims to enhance the description. For example, the word "Starts" will change to "Sessions," so "Mobile App Starts" will update to "Mobile App Sessions."
The names also will reflect
whether the metric measures campaigns running on desktop computers or mobile smartphones. For example, "Apps Uses" will update to "Desktop App Uses,"
"App Story Engagement" will update
to "Desktop App Story Engagement," and "App Engagement" will update to "Desktop App Engagement."
For the acceptation of where noted, the updates affect names only, and all underlying
calculations remain the same. No numbers or data will change, according to Facebook.
Advertisers have struggled with measuring campaigns on social sites. After a few missteps across the
industry, Facebook began making updates to its metrics names and definitions in November 2016.
The list, which now appears on its Help Center page, also includes several new in-product
definitions to make them easy to understand. It shows the former and current names to help advertisers become familiar with the changes.
The move to increase consistency in calculating and
naming advertising metrics follows a 2016 lawsuit by three marketers who said they
purchased video ads on Facebook in which Facebook provided incorrect metrics about the length of time users spent watching the video ads.
The company also publicly admitted it overestimated
for two years the average viewing time for video ads running on its platform. The cause, per Facebook, a bug in Page Insights that caused the miscalculation in
numbers.