After the recent news of Facebook?s video-viewing overestimation, the company has experienced a mixed response.
While the consensus seems to be that the backlash is a bit of an over-exaggeration, the truth of the matter is that the miscalculations come at a time when businesses are spending significantly more on video content production and ads: Coincidence or negligence"
What happened with Facebook raises two important questions: Is it wise to rely on metrics delivered by the same people who benefit from outperforming metrics" And is it wise to rely on a third party at all and cede control"
Marketers are dedicating more budgets than ever to paid advertising on social media; roughly 80 percent of marketers recently surveyed by Gartner indicated that they?d be investing in the tactic over the next 12 months. The massive user base on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter make social as a distribution channel a ?no-brainer? for many. This is, however, a slippery slope, since posting content on these platforms means that the data, and access to it, is at the mercy of the platform itself. Brands are voluntarily giving up control, meaning the rules can change at any time.
The challenge here is that marketers have zero recourse if an unfavorable change takes place?or, in the case of Facebook?s video metrics, if the information is inaccurate. While trust is a good thing, I again mention the conflict of interest between being the data provider and the sel...