Facebook moves to a slightly more ‘open’ stance with a host of third-party measurement tie-ups
Facebook has today (21 September) announced a several measurement tie-ups with third-parties, including: MarketShare; Nielsen; Oracle and Visual IQ, in a bid to show advertisers that it is not ‘grading its own homework’ when it comes to helping them evaluate the ROI on spend with the network.
Facebook is making it easier to assess the impact of ads on its network
The latest developments are itemised below, with Facebook noting that Nielsen’s Catalina Solutions is now able to help marketers better establish how ads on the Facebook network impact in-store sales (similar to the earlier integration of Oracle’s Datalogix).
- Nielsen Catalina Solutions: Nielsen Catalina Solutions will now offer FMCG advertisers an option to understand the impact of Facebook and Instagram on in-store sales
- Oracle Data Cloud Partner Lift API: This is the first integration with integrate with Facebook's Lift API (launched in May this year), a move that makes it easier for FMCG marketers to measure campaign performance
- Atlas integration with Visual IQ and MarketShare: Marketers can now use Visual IQ and MarketShare to devise multi-touch attribution (MTA) methodologies integrating data with Facebook's Atlas
- View-through Measurement with Mobile Measurement Partners: Through Facebook's Mobile Measurement Partners (MMP) - Apsalar, Adjust, Kochava, AppsFlyer, and Localytics - mobile app advertisers will now be able to assign credit to ads that people viewed but never clicked on (view-through), if that person eventually downloaded their app.
- Marketing Mix Modeling Reporting Integration: Facebook is making it easier for marketers to bring Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network campaign information into their MMM modeling by building direct integrations with partners such as Nielsen, Analytics Partners and Marketshare.
Speaking with The Drum, Brad Smallwood, Facebook senior vice president of measurements and insight, said the developments were aimed at helping marketers measure how investing their media budgets with Facebook is impacting on their business across a host of channels – not just online.
For instance, the above rollout is able to help marketers at FMCG outfits better understand how their ads on the Facebook network (including Instagram) impact in-store sales, via way of the latest Nielsen Catalina update, and then incorporate this into their post-campaign MMM assessment.
"There's a bunch of different types of investment products, from in-store [sales], to [brand] lift," he said, adding that advertisers are increasingly asking for "cross-media understanding."
He went on to add: "Marketers have been looking at these silos for years, and with digital, it just doesn't make sense ... with all the updates we're helping advertisers measure, but not doing the actual measuring ourselves."
Answering questions, over whether these latest third-party tie-ups would help ease allegations that Facebook is a 'walled garden' (one it is often at pains to downplay) Smallwood said: "There is a lot of talk about us grading our own homework. This announcement is really the opposite of that. We are working to enable the ecosystem of measurement partners."
He went on to highlight Facebook's obligation to safeguard the privacy of its users, adding that the latest developments were "a purposeful step to help advertisers understand how their ads are performing cross publisher and cross media by enabling the measurement ecosystem to measure based on real people."