ANA calls for audit of Facebook's metrics after video viewing scandal

Dive Brief:

The recent disclosure by Facebook that the company overestimated video viewing metrics for two years is "troubling," ANA President and CEO Bob Liodice said in a blog post late yesterday afternoon.
With marketers spending more than $6 billion on Facebook, an audit and accreditation by the Media Ratings Council are imperative if Facebook is to achieve the level of measurement transparency that marketers require, Liodice said.
“ANA does not believe there are any pragmatic reasons that a media company should not abide by the standards of accreditation and auditing,” Liodice wrote in the post.

Dive Insight:

The news about Facebook’s video metrics misstep made a big splash when it first broke, but it has been downplayed by some in the days since.

However, ANA's Liodice says the news points to a bigger issue, which is that independent auditing and accreditation are “table stakes” for digital advertising, yet Facebook and other digital platforms have avoided them so far.

The statement from the leader of a well-respected organization that represents a large swath of big brands steps up the pressure on Facebook to allow a third-party like the Media Ratings Council to measure its ad inventory for viewability. Liodice said that while mistakes do happen, this does not resolve the bigger issue, which is the need for Facebook and “other such major media players" to be audited and accredited.

Facebook has been able to skirt accreditation until now because the platform has grown quickly and the appropriate measurements for social media marketing are still in flux. But Facebook’s revelation last week that its video viewing metrics had been inadvertently inflated for the past two years shows just how critical standardized metrics are to the industry. Marketers are spending heavily on Facebook, often in favor of other platforms, but if its numbers are inaccurate, that money could be misspent.

Digital platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat are heavily dependent on advertising and so far have been able to attract big brands because of their large user bases. But if these platforms are growing without paying proper attention to metrics, they could begin to lose the goodwill of marketers.