Facebook counting video views wrong

Journal reported some ad buyers are upset, having based their purchasing decisions on the network’s high numbers.

Facebook did not provide more information on how it discovered the error, only disclosing that it happened a month ago. But the mix-up and its repercussions serve to highlight anew how powerful Facebook has become as an advertising and media firm — and how its own secret formulas and internal calculations can affect a bevy of other businesses

In a company statement, Facebook said: “We recently discovered an error in the way we calculate one of our video metrics. 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.”

In the end, video views are just one way businesses make decisions about advertising. Still, Facebook’s vice president of business and marketing partnerships, David Fischer, also apologized to advertisers Friday in a post on the company’s website, saying Facebook immediately fixed the problem and alerted advertisers.

“We want our clients to know that this miscalculation has not and will not going forward have an impact on billing or how media mix models value their Facebook video investments,” Fischer wrote. “But this isn’t just about this error. This is about how seriously we take our partners’ commitment to our platform, and how their investments with us wholly depend on the transparency with which we communicate.”

Facebook shares fell $2.12, or 1.63 percent, to $127.96 on Friday.