Facebook’s latest ad tool flaw puts another dent in its reputation – Heaven32

Reset your counters: Facebook had to confess to another failure of important ad reports.

It looks like it could be costly for the tech giant to correct, especially since it’s another gash in its reputation for self-reporting. (For metric errors from past Facebook ads, see our 2016 reports here

, here, here Yes here.)

AdExchanger reported the code bug last week with Facebook’s free “conversion boost” tool, which it said affected several thousand advertisers.

Since then, the discovery of the flaw has led the tech giant to offer some advertisers millions of dollars in credits, according to reports this week, to compensate for the miscalculation of the number of sales derived from ad impressions (which, at in turn, likely influenced the amount advertisers spent on their digital snake oil.)

According to a Slowly According to yesterday’s report, citing industry sources, the level of compensation offered by Facebook varies based on advertiser spending, but in some cases the error means that advertisers are receiving coupons worth tens of millions of dollars.

The issue with the tool was not resolved for 12 months, and the issue persisted between August 2019 and August 2020, according to reports.

The the Wall Street newspaper says Facebook quietly told advertisers this month about the issue with calculating the effectiveness of their ad campaigns, which has skewed the data advertisers use to determine how much to spend on their platform.

A source from a digital agency told the WSJ that the issue particularly affects certain categories, such as retail, where marketers have increased spending on Facebook and similar channels this year by 5% or 10%. to recover the business lost during the early stages of the pandemic.

Another of her industry sources pointed out that the problem affects not only media advertisers, but also the tech giant’s competitors, as the tool could influence where marketers decide to spend the budget, whether that either spend on the Facebook platform or elsewhere.

Last week, the tech giant told AdExchanger the bug was fixed on September 1, then said it was “working with affected advertisers.”

In a subsequent statement, a company spokesperson told us, “While improving our measurement products, we encountered a technical issue that affected some upscaling tests. We have fixed this problem and are working with advertisers who have influenced the studies.

Facebook did not respond to a request to confirm whether certain affected advertisers are being offered millions of dollars in ad coupons to correct their code error.

He confirmed that he was offering one-time credits to advertisers who were “significantly” affected by the (non-billable) metric issue, adding that the the impact is on a case-by-case basis, depending on the use of the tool.

He also did not confirm the number of advertisers who impacted studies following the one-year technical error, saying it was a small number.

While the tech giant may continue to run its own b2b customer reporting systems without external oversight for now, regulating the fairness and transparency of the powerful internet platforms that other companies depend on to access the market and reaching reach is a key goal of an important digital future. legislative review services in the European Union.

According to the plan of the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, the European Commission he said

The tech giants will have to open up their algorithms to public oversight bodies and will also be subject to binding transparency rules. So, time may be running out for Facebook’s selfish self-assessment.