In another blow to its reporting mechanisms, Facebook has admitted to misreporting mobile web ad numbers and handed back refunds to advertisers.
Facebook made the announcement in the US overnight saying it had uncovered the discrepancy during a regular review. The latest announcement follows a series of measurement and calculation issues in recent months.
“We recently found and fixed a bug that misattributed some clicks on video carousel ads as link clicks. This bug occurred when people were on mobile web browsers on smartphones — not on desktop or in the Facebook mobile app,” Facebook said in a statement.
Under certain conditions, where advertisers on mobile using Facebook’s video carousel unit had paid for clicks through to their destination, advertisers were charged when a user clicked a video to enlarge it for viewing.
“Advertisers will receive a full credit for the charges they incurred for these misattributed clicks.”
The mistake only happened where people used Facebook through the web browser on their phones – a small proportion of total users according to Facebook.
“Most consumers use Facebook through the app on their phones, and mobile web browser ad impressions make up a small percentage of the overall ads impressions people see on Facebook,” the company said.
“Given that this bug related to mobile web for smartphones only, and specifically for video carousel ads that bid on link clicks, the impact from a billing perspective was 0.04 per cent of ads impressions. Regardless of how many impressions were affected, we take all bugs seriously and apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.”
