Advertisers will be Able to Use Moat’s Measurement Platform for Facebook’s New Video Ad Play Metric

Facebook announced that it is changing the way its 3-second and 10-second video view counts are calculated. Until recently, these video view counts included the time period in which a viewer rewatched or replayed a video. Facebook will now include on the unrepeated time period for its the 3-second and 10-second video view metrics.

In its blog announcing the change, Facebook wrote, “We’re updating some of our video ad metrics to evolve our reporting of duration—the total amount of time a video was viewed—to focus more on consumption, the number of unrepeated seconds people watch. We’re also introducing new reporting for video plays and removing some metrics to simplify reporting.”

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Facebook adds Moat as Measurement Partner

Facebook also announced the launching of a new Video Play metric in the Ads Manager and Ads API. The new addition works on actual video plays instead of the impressions calculated during the video display in one’s News Feed.

Last year the company had explained how videos may not always play when an impression is reported due to someone’s settings, network or behavior. For example, if a person has autoplay turned off, their phone has a low battery or they’re in an area of low connectivity, videos—including video ads—would not autoplay.

“Marketers have also told us that they want a better way to measure when someone sees a video playing, which happens on average 70% of the time for videos in News Feed, versus when someone sees a video ad that has not played,” said Facebook, adding, “We give marketers a way to design a custom thumbnail to maximize the impact of their video ads by controlling what people see when their ad does not play.”

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Facebook says that in order to offer marketers a choice as well as a third-party verification in measuring their Facebook ads, it is introducing a new Video Plays metric in Ads Manager and the Ads API

“Businesses will soon be able to work with Oracle Data Cloud’s Moat Measurement products to measure the number of video ads that start to play. We’ll continue working with other partners to enable more third-party verification,” added Facebook.

Removal of redundant metrics

While advertisers have found a new way to track and verify video ad plays through the newly announced metric, Facebook clarified that it will be discontinuing two other metrics. “In an effort to simplify ad metrics and make it easier to understand how your ad performed, we’re removing 30-Second Video View and Video Percentage Watched because they are redundant with other metrics we offer and are used infrequently.”

The company added that these metric updates will be rolling out globally to all advertisers over the next couple of weeks.

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