The weekend was abuzz with the story of how the reported average time spent on Facebook videos had been inflated for the last two years. The error came from excluding views of less than three seconds from average time spent calculations thereby inflating the average.
Important as the news is, especially to content publishers, it's less so to practitioners from the marketer and agency side. On day to day operations built mostly on raw campaign data on views, pricing,etc, the metric is almost inconsequential. But even on the larger plane of,say, budget allocations on which it has the most bearing, this should matter less than may be presumed.
First, such a metric is only one among other factors that decides allocations. Second , the clear line between platform/channel consumption versus advertising consumption is as evident from daily-life observation as it is from analytics data. Something like a share of time spent doesn't necessarily equate to share of budget. Campaign analytics data provide a good enough input into what that share should be.
So to me the misreporting itself (inadvertent or otherwise) is secondary. Facebook with its 1.7 bn. monthly active user base - and psychographics revealed (almost literally !) for all the world to see is - is obviously one of the largest and richest ever one-stop Target shop in mass marketing history. Any improvement on channel or product - video, in this case- is at worst a tweak or two away. Where's the case against ?
The beef I take out from the story, instead, is the roles both of third party validation AND second party vigilance in using first party data.
Third party validation is the obvious one and doesn't need elaboration. The entire ecosystem , digital giants included, should only welcome something that'd grow the pie by removing doubt and uncertainty.
The Second Party stuff though ? Much overlooked. And very important !
This senior, very experienced and unabashedly old school data specialist who I have learned a lot from once used a phrase to describe a bunch of enthusiasts who were so impressed with a website's new metric that they not only didn't notice its obvious flaws but also immediately began advocating its use. Digital Bunnies, he called them.I thought that both funny and pretty much on the money.
As click-of-the-mouse analytics packages and the like proliferate with their masses of first party data , it's tempting to leave everything to them. In fairness , when there's so much data placed out there so transparently (give or take !) that's reasonable enough.
Up to a point.
What still remains are the interpretation of those numbers in context - e.g. how big are those views ? How good is that VTR ? - and thinking about the questions which are outside the scope of the data - e.g., how likely is a claim based on it. That's where second party vigilance comes in with its evaluation of the numbers and assessment of the pros and the cons. And that's where we probably could do more.
The good old Think For Yourself is part of the toolkit too - even if the 'too much too fast' digital marketplace can overwhelm one into forgetting that !
That funny bunny could do with some stick !
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