#FACEBOOK MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS FULL#
#FACEBOOK MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS SERIES#

In 2016, the company said it had overestimated viewing time for video ads, leading advertisers to sue. Photo illustration: Adele Morgan/The Wall Street Journalįacebook has struggled with the accuracy of some of its metrics in the past. WSJ’s Joanna Stern reviews the hearings of both to explore what cigarette regulation can tell us about what may be coming for Big Tech. Members of Congress have likened Facebook and Instagram’s tactics to that of the tobacco industry. For smaller advertisers that buy based on performance, such as the number of sales an ad generates, changes to a campaign’s potential reach are less important, industry executives said. Another staffer replied, “There are tough pros & cons of integrating SUMAs into reporting,” adding that there should be “leadership review before locking in on a course of action.”įacebook says reach-and-frequency campaigns are a small share of its revenue. Some Facebook staffers recommended accounting for multiple users in the numbers it reports to advertisers. The median reduction in weekly reach for such campaigns would be about 2.2%, and in some cases 5% to 10%, the comment said. Reach-and-frequency campaigns aimed at bigger audiences of 10 million or more people a week could take a hit if they were corrected to remove duplication, according to a comment on a 2018 document. Facebook’s system gives an estimate of how many such people the campaign could reach.

#FACEBOOK MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS SERIES#

The documents are part of a collection of internal Facebook communications that have formed the basis of a series of Journal articles called the Facebook Files.įacebook researchers in the documents quantified the potential impact for advertisers if duplicate users were removed from the audiences it estimated would be reached in a certain kind of ad campaign called “reach and frequency.” In such a campaign, favored by big brands to help raise awareness of their offerings, an advertiser selects an audience based on certain attributes. “Nothing in this story changes the estimate of duplicate accounts we disclose in our public filings, which includes new users, or that we provide context on in our ad products, ad interfaces, in our help centers, and in other places,” he said. Said, adding that duplicate accounts pose a challenge for many large digital platforms, and that advertisers use Facebook because it gives them desired results.

#FACEBOOK MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS FULL#

“It’s not a revelation that we study duplicate accounts, and this snapshot of information doesn’t tell the full story,” Facebook spokesman

But data cited in the documents show that a quarter to a third of duplicates have been what Facebook calls “persistent SUMA,” where a user continues to operate multiple accounts. The memos viewed by the Journal suggest that most instances of multiple accounts stem from users being locked out of their main accounts or making mistakes when signing in, and Facebook says it tries to redirect these users back into their primary accounts. Facebook says the policy helps prevent impersonation and scams. UnlikeĪnd other platforms without such rules, the company requires users to have just one master account under a real name. The internal Facebook research documents on users with multiple accounts-spanning from 2017 through earlier this year-offer a more expansive view into how the company has handled the phenomenon.įacebook has long called itself a “real identity platform” and bars users from having multiple personal accounts. Want an email alert for the next article in the Journal’s Facebook Files investigation? Sign up here and also get email alerts for major tech sector news in the future. On its website for advertisers, Facebook says its estimate for an ad’s audience size depends in part on the number of accounts users have, but it doesn’t quantify the impact. “If your goal as an advertiser is to reach the most amount of people at the lowest cost, then there would be a very real impact to that number being wrong.”įacebook said in its most recent quarterly securities filings that it estimates 11% of its monthly active users world-wide-which totaled 2.9 billion for its flagship platform in the second quarter-are duplicate accounts, with developing markets accounting for a higher proportion of them than developed ones. Head of social media at Wpromote, a U.S.-based digital-marketing agency. Potential reach metrics are “a starting point of our strategic conversation with our clients,” said Facebook has long called itself a ‘real identity platform’ and bars users from having multiple personal accounts, unlike Twitter and other platforms without such rules.

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