
Did Facebook’s faulty data push publishers to make terrible decisions on video? - laurex
http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/10/did-facebooks-faulty-data-push-news-publishers-to-make-terrible-decisions-on-video/
======
Tsubasachan
I have unlimited 4G data but I never watch videos. For one I don't want sound
blaring out of my phone. Second I can actually read faster than your video.
Information density.

Our ancestors invented the script for a reason and its not going anywhere.

~~~
mrweasel
For videos to work, I would assume that you'd need the audio to play as well,
in most cases anyway. The thing is, I don't know anyone who doesn't mute their
phone (or computer) all the time, and old un-mute when they really want to
watch, and hear, a video.

It's certainly Facebooks fault for giving out wrong statistics, but I also
feel like the advertising industry have failed to do extremely basic research.

~~~
ryukafalz
I don't. I keep the ringer volume muted, but the media volume turned up - this
usually serves me pretty well.

...until I hit an autoplaying video somewhere, but I usually just learn to
avoid sites that do that.

------
sonnyblarney
If the ads are in any way related to conversions, the data comes home to roost
very, very quickly.

Ad spends are measured and results are tracked.

The value of those ads is a function of how far the needle is moved.

It's only when the needle can only be loosely measured can this go awry. For
example, in a brand awareness campaign, it's sometimes hard to measure effect.

If FB was reporting '80% viewed' when it was '20%' then it's basically fraud.

What some guy says at a conference about 'the future of ads' is almost
irrelevant, people are saying things all the time, and even if companies were
to allocated more budget there ... they should see the results for themselves
and adjust.

~~~
robryan
Yeah, time viewed is really only a vanity metric that only someone building a
campaign with no direct result at all would look at.

The kind of big business campaign just blowing money on branding is probably
getting an even worse return on TV.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Time viewed is not a vanity metric for a brand awareness campaign (fyi those a
'real things'), or even an indirect campaign say for a movie launch where a 3
second view is not the same as a 25 second view.

If you're launching a big film like Avengers, a 25 second view is a like a
'soft lead' and you can correlate that to how many tickets you're going to
sell.

Brand awareness is much more intangible, but they are in the end real things.

But yes, the softer metrics are massively abused by agencies, and in-house
marketing teams trying to justify spend, hires etc..

Weirdly, so much of the 'conversion' stuff is utter crap, like ads for 'photos
of Jet Fighters' or 'actresses with and without makeup' where they jam 40 ads
on the screen each time. It's this kind of crap that really ruins the
internet.

------
netaustin
It's simplistic to lay publishing's woes so squarely at the feet of Facebook's
video stats. This was contributing factor, certainly, but the executives who
pivoted to video weren't abandoning 7% margins on text in search of 15%
margins — if they were, they'd likely have left the text operation intact and
built video atop a successful business. Editorial operations were already
struggling! In some cases, the promise of video may have spurred additional
investment in publishers that wouldn't have been able to get it with just
text. While video is more expensive to produce, the CPMs are also higher,
which creates a bigger cashflow. It seems likely that this was a factor in
Buzzfeed's NBCUniversal rounds.

~~~
badloginagain
Many orgs had to let a bunch of people from text to free up resources for
video, video being so much more expensive than text/audio.

~~~
madeofpalk
Hold up - they didn’t “have to” let anyone go, they chose to because they
wanted to hire other people.

~~~
armandososa
No. They didn't "had to" produce more video content. But once they decided to
do just that, they _had to_ let people go because producing video is more
expensive. That's what the GP is saying.

------
reilly3000
It wasn't just Facebook metrics that made people jump on the video bandwagon.
The whole video ad stack from player to ad server to header bidding wrapper to
bandwidth is full of ways to spend 4-6 figures per month on fixed overhead and
variable cost to run a player at scale, let alone production. Most pubs have
been financially burned on video by an industry that can't quite understand
why it isn't working. All the while, marketers continue to have the largest
and most impactful influence ever with TV.

I know why it isn't working: human hands are made for interacting with things.
While sitting in front of a TV, we humans tend to believe what we're told, and
we're typically prone, not on guard. Who wants to hold an ad in their hands?
Who doesn't feel burned when a video ad interrupts their flow of their digital
(fingeratively) pleasure trail?

Now imagine what kind of influence can be had over another when they are in a
fully immersive digital (binary) experience. Its like handing over your entire
limbic system to the machine.

Malevolent influence at scale is remarkably accepted by humans, it is our
past. I hope our future moves towards respecting the sovereignty of individual
human consciousness.

Laws, attitudes, and behaviors need to change. We all who have been Branded
have had a piece of our identity conformed to serve the ambition of another. I
think the average American brain walking through the grocery store is
analogous to a chairlift pole covered in stickers, a wall covered in layers of
gum. Any exactly how do you clean away an Impression?

I'm a recovering internet marketer. I've felt lousy for a long time for having
been so cavalier with influence. I've been trying to see what better looks
like for a long time. What do you think better looks like? Feels like?

~~~
buboard
I believe people are just applying whatever worked on TV blindly, but on the
TV you are buying a part of the flow, while on the web you are buying an
interruption to the flow which should discount its cost right out the door.
And while there are many ways with which text ads can fit in a document
layout, there is not many ways to lay out an ad in a video. I find the product
placements that many youtubers do is more appealing, and a better way to
promote a brand rather than "this ad will close in 20 seconds"

------
RandomInteger4
Weren't people spending more time on video on Facebook due to Facebook
prioritizing video and pages turning still images into videos of still images?

Anyone else know what I'm referring to here? You see an image someone shared,
but it's a video, so you click it, and it's still a still image, because page
admins were trying to game the system.

~~~
Ibethewalrus
What? Really? I don’t use FB but sounds like something anyone would do to game
the system

~~~
RandomInteger4
Yerp. Here are a few links regarding the issue:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-post-short-videos-of-
sti...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-post-short-videos-of-still-images-
on-Facebook-instead-of-just-an-image)

[https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/facebook-
cr...](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/facebook-cracks-down-
static-images-video-and-fake-video-play-buttons-new-algorithm)

~~~
Ibethewalrus
thanks, people always trying to outsmart others...

------
gcbw2
How is this different from Volkswagen? They inflated a metric by 600+%
according to the legal documents on the article, for 2+ years. And kept all
the revenue from the 'mistake' while crushing competitors that lost business
for those two years.

~~~
philipps
I’m not sure if you are suggesting FB should face similar consequences as VW
or that FB’s conduct is excusable because others do similar things.

Some differences are that VW plead guilty and paid a 2.8B $ fine, the CEO
resigned, executives have been facing criminal charges, and a slew of
international cases are still outstanding. Another difference is that VW’s
deceit had direct human health consequences.

------
cimi_
From the the linked post in the article
([https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-overestimated-key-
vide...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-overestimated-key-video-metric-
for-two-years-1474586951)):

> Ad buying agency Publicis Media was told by Facebook that the earlier
> counting method likely overestimated average time spent watching videos by
> between 60% and 80%, according to a late August letter Publicis Media sent
> to clients that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

From the FB post ([https://www.facebook.com/business/news/facebook-video-
metric...](https://www.facebook.com/business/news/facebook-video-metrics-
update)):

> The metric should have reflected the total time spent watching a video
> divided by the total number of people who played the video. But it didn’t –
> it reflected the total time spent watching a video divided by only the
> number of “views” of a video [...].

How does this work?

~~~
halflings
They explain that a "view" is when the user watches the video for more than 3
seconds.

View time is probably highly heavily skewed towards plays that last less than
3 seconds. (also because facebook autoplays videos without any pause time)

If 60% of viewers play the video for 0-3 seconds, and only 40% view the rest
of the video, you're grossly overstation the average view time.

Removing users with less than 3 seconds seems 100% intentional (to avoid
exposing the fact that most viewers are not _really_ viewers, they immediately
dismiss the video), not an error.

~~~
dirkgently
Right on.

In other words, fb measures were correct for "people watching videos for 3
seconds or more". But they didn't: 1\. Qualify their numbers with that. 2\.
Disclose how many people were NOT watching videos.

Without these two critical details, the numbers represented "all Facebook
users".

~~~
traek
No, they were still incorrect for "people watching videos for 3 seconds or
more." For that to be correct, the total view time (numerator in the figure in
the article) would have to be view time only for those users who watched >3
seconds.

------
arcticfox
> “The best way to tell stories, in this world where so much information is
> coming at us, actually is video,” Mendelsohn continued. “It commands so much
> more information in a much quicker period. So actually, the trend helps us
> to digest more of the information, in a quicker way.”

This opinion is hard to swallow. This is not . at . all true. If the
"information" you're trying to convey is colors and bokeh, sure...

~~~
alot
A few months ago I would have agreed wholeheartedly. I recently had to replace
the alternator on my 2008 solara and after finding instructions in text form
unclear I found a video on YouTube that made the process extremely easy. Thing
is, there were a few tiny details I was able to glean from the video that made
the difference being very frustrated and very successful.

~~~
bjt2n3904
For complex instructions like vehicle repair, videos can be amazing --
especially with good focus and lighting.

For letting me know what Trump tweeted yesterday, I don't need a five minute
video with commentary. Even for protests and marches, a few pictures and a
paragraph will pretty much do. Most news I'm happy to just read about.

~~~
alot
Agreed. I guess video vs text is like most tools. Use the one that’s the best
fit for the job.

------
dylan604
I’ve been in and around the commercial spot industry for most of my employable
life. I’ve seen the rise & fall of production work due to the lower cost to
entry to professional quality gear and the bottom falling out in ‘08. TV ad
sales have never gone away though. The production budgets fell, but not the ad
buys. There now exists video productions solely for online, and it will never
see TV. From my conversations with these agencies, online ad click through
rates are still a drop in the bucket from their TV presence. How they justify
this I don’t know, and I know that’s supposed to be a huge selling point of
online advertising.

Does that mean video is more effective than text?? Depends on your agency I
guess, or maybe depends on the campaign.

~~~
akiselev
How is the ROI or whatever the TV equivalent of click through rates measured
for TV commercials? Is the measurement different between ads that focus on
selling something vs those that focus on maintaining brand awareness (like
Coca Cola and the big car makers)?

~~~
dylan604
That's what I've never understood. I'm in the camera department, so I'm just
concerned with with acquiring the picture. I've chatted with some of the ad
peeps on set, but they are mainly concerned with getting the spot produced.
I've never properly chatted with the analytics folks. I'm assuming in the old
days, it was Nielsen ratings. Today, I'd assume your digital cable box is
providing all of the analytics ever needed. Still don't know how comparing
eyeballs viewing an ad translates to people spending dollars in a store.

I have had direct conversations with small market clients. The client hired a
new agency, and that agency hired us to shoot the spots. The agency came up
with a decent small market campaign. The next time it came time to shoot the
next series of spots, the client mentioned the spike in business from the ads
after they started airing. Yes, the agency also had radio and online campaign,
but it was the TV ads that resulted in the spike in calls. ROI must be pretty
good. In a single day shoot, we can shoot 6 spots for this client. They then
air 1 spot per month.

I'd imagine the smaller market clients can see a significant ROI vs mega-
clients shooting brand awareness campaigns. If you've ever seen Mad Men and
how they put agencies on annual retainers, then you'll get what I mean. The
Madison Avenue crowd probably have tons of research, but that's so far out of
my circles of interest.

~~~
buboard
My theory is that all is faith-based. Because the amount spent on advertising
is relatively small, advertisers are happy to spend whatever the publisher
asks, and their management will still be happy. As long as both advertisers
and publishers believe they provide value to each other (and they definitely
do, they just don't know how much) the model is not questioned and everybody
's happy.

Online banner advertising is often similar , with the major difference that
there is a limited 24 hours in a day in which the TV budget gets allocated,
while there are vastly more publishers on the web.

------
csomar
> In one, Facebook had inflated Average Duration of Video Viewed from 2.0
> seconds to 17.5 seconds (an increase of 775%); in the other, Facebook had
> inflated Average Duration of Video Viewed from 2.4 seconds to 17.3 seconds
> (an increase of 621%).

How does Facebook measure the success of video viewership? From my experience,
Facebook forces you to view the whole ad. This contrasts with YouTube: You are
forced to watch for a few seconds and can opt-out later.

This gives an important signal: The viewer was not interested and thus bailed
out. He didn't watch the whole video. This can't happen in Facebook: You are
forced to watch the whole video-ad if you want to carry on watching your
original video.

Another complaint: Auto-Play. If I'm watching a video, Facebook will auto-jump
to another video in a ridiculously short-amount of time. There is not opt-out
of this behavior. You are forced to watch the next video; and potentially the
next ad.

Again, this contrasts with YouTube: Auto-Play is opt-in. The time before the
player jumps to the next video is significantly longer. The time before the
player jump in Facebook is so short that I almost always fail to prevent it.

So dark-patterned Facebook these days. It is really annoying, scary and
unfriendly.

------
daodedickinson
>“The best way to tell stories, in this world where so much information is
coming at us, actually is video,” Mendelsohn continued. “It commands so much
more information in a much quicker period. So actually, the trend helps us to
digest more of the information, in a quicker way.”

How bad of a reading disorder do you have to have to think you can extract
information more efficiently from video than text?

------
degenerate
Nobody is mentioning video ads. I would gladly consume more video on my phone
if there wasn't an adroll.

I can use adblock on my computer, but it's more difficult on the phone (DNS66,
etc) so less likely I will have adblocking on the phone.

As publishers moved more to video to capitalize on video plays, so did ads
come with them, thus video became less appealing for me.

That's how it played out for me the past 2 years, and probably you too.

~~~
gcbw2
Why is it more difficult on a phone?

it is _exactly_ the same process as a desktop. First install a decent browser
(not the crap one shipped by the OEM), for example, firefox for Android. Then
install your favorite adblocker extensions (which should be uBlock Origin).
Done. No step 3!

------
xtiansimon
This sound bite from WNYC Marketplace [1] reminded me of how shakey creative
industry has always been.

"Who cares how long people watch videos on facebook? News
organizations...thinking video was where the ad money was." [...]

Ben Bradford (reporting). [...] Just months after he was hired, Gonzales was
let go [as a video producer for Mic].

Gabe. And we started seeing the same happen everywere. Any you know I think at
that point you realize the jig is up, right?

[1]: [Marketplace Business: A look back at the "pivot to video" after a new
lawsuit alleges Facebook misled about video
viewership]([https://www.marketplace.org/2018/10/18/economy/facebook-
pivo...](https://www.marketplace.org/2018/10/18/economy/facebook-pivot-video-
news-journalism-jobs-advertisers))

------
malvosenior
> _What does seem clear now is that Facebook’s executives’ statements about
> video should not have been a factor in news publishers’ decisions to lay off
> their editorial staffs. But it’s hard not to conclude that publishers heard
> that rhapsodizing about the future and assumed that Facebook knew better
> than they did, that Facebook’s data must be more accurate than their own
> data was, that Facebook was perceiving something that they could not. That
> their own eyes were wrong._

If you're making massive, sweeping changes to the structure of your business
and product offering based on Facebook PR, you deserve to go out of business.

What FB said could have even been true and these organizations could have
staffed up on all video only to later become victims of an algorithm change or
some arbitrary FB rule in the future.

------
harry8
Did internet ad fraud con advertisers? Direct clicks and conversions are such
lowest common denominator crap. Suitable for ponzi schemes and snake oil
sales. Tesla advertises amazingly well online. Their conversion rate is
clearly zero. Not close to zero, not "they don't care" It is zero, nothing,
not one single conversion.

Across the breadth range of companies built on advertising from coca cola to
chanel as far as I can see they don't use internet ads. These companies have
not gone away. Google, Facebook, ebay etc etc all have poster ads in my town.
I guess targeted internet ads didn't work for their purposes.

~~~
Spooky23
What you are describing isn’t a con. A coke billboard fills a different
purpose than a coupon or a transactional online ad.

What is a con is telling advertisers that I watched something for 5 minutes,
when in fact I watched for 5 seconds. Imagine if you were an advertiser who
paid for a product placement in videos. Your campaign was a total waste of
time.

------
rossdavidh
The moral of the story: if what the "person/organization who ought to know
about these things" is telling you doesn't make sense or doesn't match with
your own experience, consider the possibility that they might be just plain
wrong. Especially if it would be wrong in a way that makes them look better.

~~~
ianai
What about the equally important take away that you can trust Facebook to lie
at any chance it suits them?

~~~
omegaworks
I'm curious why Facebook chose to share the wrong metrics. What was the
intent?

~~~
mic47
"why Facebook chose to share the wrong metrics"

Why did you choose to include that bug into your code?

Srsly, people don't choose to make mistakes (but sometimes they choose to do
cover up).

Also, there is no such things as "Facebook". Facebook didn't choose, someone
inside Facebook either make mistake, or deliberate decision. "Facebook" is not
single entity with single agenda and plan, but complex company, with different
people optimizing for different things (i.e. security/privacy and growth and
ads). There is shared high-level vision, but not every decision is made at
single place.

~~~
omegaworks
State a falsehood with the intent to deceive is implied by "lie." I'm curious
what intent people are ascribing to this action.

You say it was a mistake, at the same time you give many reasons why it likely
wasn't a mistake: many people vet the public-facing communications of such a
large company.

------
cimi_
From the linked FB post ([https://www.facebook.com/business/news/facebook-
video-metric...](https://www.facebook.com/business/news/facebook-video-
metrics-update)):

> This error should not stand in the way of our ultimate goal, which is to do
> what’s in the best interest of our partners and their business growth.

~~~
ahartmetz
Hooo wait, I thought it was about connecting the world!

------
underwater
> “All the while, Facebook continued to reap the benefits from the inflated
> numbers”

I don’t see how Facebook benefited from the data being wrong. Facebook wins by
having publishers to produce formats and content that users actually want to
see.

~~~
justinclift
Facebook was launching it's own competing news thing wasn't it? eg clearing
away some of the potential competitors

------
paulpauper
This seems like that lawsuit against Google adsenes while back. the
settlement, if any, will be very low and will go mostly to lawyers. like
google, Facebook is very, very good at winning its cases and paying very
little otherwise.

------
natch
This reads like a carefully disguised defend, deflect, and dilute piece
crafted against the publishers on belhalf of Facebook. Are we sure it is not
paid for by Facebook or some entity aligned with Facebook?

------
luckycharms810
This truly feels like an article that doesn’t understand the landscape of
digital advertising. It is naive to believe that publishers are taking queues
from Facebook on how to publish their content. All publishers ( including
Facebook ) take their content queues based on what advertisers want. This is
their source of revenue, and the only way to move the bottom line as a
publisher. Video advertising is far more lucrative than banners. In order to
create a consistent user experience, you cannot have video ads alongside
static content. While the miscalculation is certain metrics might have made
Facebooks inventory look a little better, it 100% did not have an industry
changing influence as indicated here.

------
kermittd
I knew it! But seriously I’ve heard about this “ trend” for years but
anecdotally most people I know don’t consume random videos on social networks.

Vids from friends?

That seems to be a different story.

------
justinclift
So Facebook repeatedly gives publishers incorrect info, and some of those
publishers go broke.

Meanwhile, Facebook is getting it's own (news) publishing operation off the
ground. Which could probably do with having less competitors.

That could be viewed in a rather specific light. "Operating in Bad Faith"
might be the nicest way to put it? ;)

