Facebook Overestimated Key Video Metric for Two Years

[HardOCP News]

Facebook overestimated the average time people spent watching videos by between 60% and 80%? How the hell do you screw up that bad unless it was intentional?

“We recently discovered an error in the way we calculate one of our video metrics,” Facebook said in a statement. “This error has been fixed, it did not impact billing, and we have notified our partners both through our product dashboards and via sales and publisher outreach. We also renamed the metric to make it clearer what we measure. This metric is one of many our partners use to assess their video campaigns.”

 

[Darunion]

just because the video was running (because it autoplays) doesnt mean people are watching it

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

just because the video was running (because it autoplays) doesnt mean people are watching it

That was my first guess too, and this might still be the problem, but the actual issue they caught was that they excluded all video plays that were shorter than 3 seconds, massively inflating the average.

 

[Exavior]

wait so .6% and 60% aren't the same?

 

[kandrey89]

shitty autoplay feature consuming bandwidth without asking

 

[N4CR]

Sorry advertisers, we lied. But we've fixed it. No refunds.

Fucking bookface.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

Sorry advertisers, we lied. But we've fixed it. No refunds.

Fucking bookface.

They should hire Lance Armstrong as their spokesperson.

'What, you actually believed me when I was lying to you? Not my problem.'

 

[N4CR]

They should hire Lance Armstrong as their spokesperson.

'What, you actually believed me when I was lying to you? Not my problem.'

Bhahahaha him and Chemical Ali would make an amazing spokes-pair.