Facebook Gets Rid Of Unintentional Clicks And Ad Impressions

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What is the most annoying thing for advertisers? Paying for clicks and impressions that were unintentional, right? It seems Facebook has a solution for this now.

Trust is not an easy thing to earn. It’s even harder to maintain. After a few issues with ads reporting, some could argue that advertisers may have lost some faith in Facebook’s true ability to only charge for real ad impressions and intentional clicks. Today the company is bringing two major updates to show its commitment to providing accurate results.

Bye Bye Unintentional Clicks

Firstly, unintentional clicks on ads in Audience Network will no longer be taken into account, reported, nor charged. Bad ad placements often result in users clicking on an ad by accident. These interactions are usually quick to end, as the user realises his mistake. Now, advertisers won’t be charged for them anymore.

Publishers won’t like it, but Facebook will stop counting ad clicks that are deemed unintentional.

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Starting immediately, Facebook will measure the time spent on a landing page following an ad click, to establish whether it was an intentional click, or not. The threshold has been fixed at 2 seconds. If a user spends less that on the landing page, the click is not reported, and the advertiser does not get charged for it.

Above is an example of an ad placement that may lead to an unintentional click

Total, Gross And Auto-Refresh Impressions

Facebook is adding two new metrics for advertisers to truly measure the results of their campaigns: Gross impressions and “auto-refresh” impressions.

Gross impressions encompass all impressions, billable and non-billable. An impression is considered non-billable when it occurs after your budget was spent, when it is served to the same person within a short timeframe, or if it was identified as fraudulent.

Auto-refresh impressions provide a granular look at impressions generated from right-hand side placements. Not many users noticed it, but right column ads are not static on Facebook for desktop. They are in fact auto-refreshed regularly, so Facebook can serve more ads within its property. Auto-refresh impressions will tell you how many of your ad impressions are a result of a browser refresh

Did you know that right-column ads are auto-refreshed on Facebook desktop?

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With these two updates, Facebook is certainly trying to stay honest, and to regain some well-needed trust among advertisers. But the truth remains: can we really afford not to advertise on Facebook anyway?