Facebook To Remove 11 Key Metrics

Facebook are removing a number of metrics that are identified as redundant, outdated, not actionable or infrequently used, starting in July of 2018 with the next release of the Graph API .

Removing these metrics will make it easier to identify those metrics that are best suited for measuring business outcomes or providing actionable insights on creative, audience and optimisation strategies.

They're removing the following metrics and have provided some guidance on other metrics that we Facebook marketers should use instead:

1.Actions, People taking action, cost per any action

The Actions metric is a composite of various actions and events, such as engagement, clicks or conversions. As the Facebook platform introduces more actions that people can take on an ad, this metric becomes more nuanced, and a less relevant signal for measuring business outcomes. Facebook recommend customising your own composite metric that reflects actions that are meaningful to your business, instead of using actions.

2. Amount Spent Today

Facebook recommend using the dynamic date selector to see results for Today and compare results across different date ranges instead of using the amount spent today metric. Select Today for the date range and use the Amount Spent metric to see how much money you've spent on your campaign starting at 12:00 am (midnight) today.

3. Button clicks 

The button clicksmetric shows the number of times that people clicked the call-to-action button on your ad. Button clicks is redundant because these clicks are also either reflected in the link clicksmetric or other distinct metrics such as the event responses metric and the offers saved metric. Facebook recommend using link clicks, event responses or offers saved instead of button clicks.

4. Canvas component time percentage

 The canvas component time percentage metric hasn't been a widely used metric. We recommend using the canvas view time metric and the canvas view percentagemetric instead of canvas component time percentage.

5. Carousel card

Facebook are no longer supporting the carousel card breakdown for conversion metrics (e.g. website conversions) and for any calculated metrics such as CTR because these insights have been infrequently used. You can still see the link clicks metric broken down by carousel card and see conversion results without the carousel card breakdown.

6. Link click destination

After Facebook launched this breakdown in July of 2017, a number of mobile operating system updates that followed began to prevent us from determining whether someone was redirected to an app's deep link or to an app store for ads that were set up with back-up link destinations. Us advertisers can still use outbound clicks and landing page views metrics to measure which clicks lead people to destinations off Facebook while we continue to explore other ways of providing more granular app deep link or app store destination insights.

7. Mobile app actions conversion value

 The mobile app actions conversion value metric is based on the value that you assigned to an app action when you set up the app event. Facebook recommend using specific app event conversion values (e.g. mobile app purchases conversion value) instead of mobile app actions conversion value.

8. Page mentions, cost per Page mention

The Page mentions metric is an outdated metric and is not indicative of either positive or negative sentiment towards your brand. Facebook don't recommend using Page mentions to evaluate campaign performance. Instead, if you're running a Page likes campaign, they recommend using the Page likesmetric or the Page engagementmetric, as they're more indicative of the success of a Page likes campaign.

9. Page tab views, cost per Page tab view

The Page tab views metric measures the number of views of tabs on your Facebook Page that are attributed to your ads. If you're running a Page likes campaign, they recommend using the Page likesmetric or the Page engagementmetric, as they're more indicative of the success of a Page likes campaign than Page tab views.

10. Positive feedback, negative feedback

The relevance scoremetric already uses positive feedback and negative feedbacksignals as inputs, and the granularity provided by breaking out positive and negative feedback creates more confusion than useful insights. Facebook recommend using relevance scoreinstead of positive feedback and negative feedback to understand how well a target audience is responding to ads.

11. Social reach, social impressions, social clicks, unique social clicks

Social metrics (e.g. Social reach, social impressions, social clicks) are outdated metrics that show the number of people who saw an ad when displayed with social information. The social reach metric isn't meaningfully different from the reach and impressions metrics and the insights provided aren't actionable, as advertisers don't have control over when ads are/aren't shown with social information. Facebook recommend using reach instead of social reach, and using impressionsinstead of social impressions to evaluate campaign performance.

Agencies akin, we hope you've found value in this information share.

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Jade, Director, Sierra Six Media | www.sierrasixmedia.com