Facebook aims to help marketers to shift away from proxy metrics to lifetime-value measurement standards
Facebook is aiming to help the marketing industry focus less on “proxy metrics” and instead encourage adoption of standard metrics that are “more representative” of today’s consumer journey, as part of a new aggressive growth strategy for its Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) programme, according to its new chief Mike Randall.
Speaking to The Drum Randall, who has been in his new role just over 90 days, said the social network is planning a three-pronged approach to scale its PMD programme globally, focusing on global scalability, mobile products and measurement.
The social network first established the PMD programme last April after it merged its Preferred Developer Consultant (PDC) and Marketing API (MAP) programmes.
Its aim is to help connect marketers and advertisers with developers who can make their campaigns more engaging and maximise the use of the platform.
Randall said measurement is a key focus area for the programme. “The industry has been locked into proxy metrics – things like cost per acquisitions and click-through rates and last-click attribution models.
“But we think the industry can move towards a form of measurement that is more representative of today’s [customer] journey.”
He cited a recent Kenshoo report in which Facebook was revealed to be undervalued by up to 30 per cent by those who use last-click, rather than multi-click, attribution models.
“We believe PMDs can help us drive adoption of measurement standards, whether it’s Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) from Nielsen, or helping the industry away from proxy metrics and away from last-click to multi-click attribution models, and other ways of determining lifetime value of a customer beyond just the initial acquisition,” he added.
Randall’s appointment marks the start of a more aggressive expansion plan for the social network’s PMD programme, having previously been left to grow more organically.
He said the previous approach was more “hands off” but that it is no adopting a more “directed” approach.
“We want to invest in the developer ecosystem to drive adoption of our tech platform and products and drive innovation in our core products.
“The world is a different place to four years ago, even 18 months ago and the importance of global and mobile has increased. 60 per cent of the PMDs are headquartered outside the US, and 82 per cent of Facebook users are outside North America so this is where we must focus.”
However, he said the focus will be on bringing in “quality” developers rather than “quantity”, with the current pool numbering around 200 companies.
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