Dive Brief:
- Through its new Lift API, Facebook is testing giving a new level of control over performance measurement to third parties such as marketers and marketing tech companies, Adweek reported.
- Lift API gives those third parties access to data that allows them create their own measurement metrics for conversion rate, sales and mobile app installs.
- It is built on Facebook’s Lift measurement tool released January 2015, and Lift API gives a much larger number of third parties access to the data.
Dive Insight:
The social network titan is also testing new fields and categories in its ad reporting in order to, what a Facebook representative told Adweek, "help advertisers understand which ads people saw or clicked on before a bottom-funnel conversion, such as making a purchase or becoming a qualified lead."
The Facebook rep added that the challenge is people using multiple devices during the buying path as well as making purchases on- and offline – which makes attributing sales to marketing difficult. And information about how well ads are working to get people through the purchase process based on cookies and clicks can be misleading, the rep explained.
Measurement across all marketing channels – including combining offline and digital marketing – has become a common topic of conversation among industry insiders. Just this week, a new tool from Nielsen Catalina Solutions and Time Inc. launched to help marketers and publishers attribute print ads to offline sales.
These tests from Facebook help illustrate that players on both sides of the digital advertising coin see value in more measurement.
