Facebook Issues Refunds To Advertisers Over Video Click Glitch

Although Facebook is best known for its social networking offerings, the company’s bread and butter comes from its advertising revenue. But in a post Tuesday, Facebook said it had mistakenly charged advertisers due to an advertising click detection error.

Facebook said the bug miscategorized some clicks on video carousel ads as link clicks. The bug only occurred from Facebook users who were using a browser to access Facebook on their smartphones and didn’t occur on desktops or the Facebook app. Facebook said the affected advertisers were fully refunded for the misdirected ad charges.

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Facebook detailed the bug in their statement:

"The bug affected billing only for the following conditions: for the video carousel ad unit; when the advertiser chose to bid on link clicks; and only for people who were on smartphone web browsers. In these cases, instead of being billed only for link clicks [clicks to an advertiser’s selected destination], these advertisers were incorrectly billed when people clicked on the videos in the carousel to enlarge and watch them. Advertisers will receive a full credit for the charges they incurred for these misattributed clicks.

"Most consumers use Facebook through the app on their phones, and mobile web browser ad impressions make up a small percentage of the overall ads impressions people see on Facebook. Given that this bug related to mobile web for smartphones only, and specifically for video carousel ads that bid on link clicks, the impact from a billing perspective was 0.04 percent of ads impressions."

The scale of the bug was relatively minor, as the average refund payment to affected advertisers was only around $10, Marketing Land reported. But it’s also the latest advertising miscalculation from Facebook because, as Marketing Land also noted, Facebook has been wrangling a series of bugs related to user views and clicks for products like Instant Articles and general referrals.

The latest advertising bug also comes as Facebook looks to bolster its video offerings considerably. In the past year, Facebook has retooled its mobile and desktop setups to make video a more prominent part of the News Feed. Facebook has also made significant inroads into developing its own exclusive and original video content for users, even launching apps for home TVs designed to make it easier to watch videos. The move also echoes similar investments from companies like Snapchat and Twitter, who have launched or are planning to launch their own exclusive video content.

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For Facebook and other tech companies, the biggest appeal for video comes from the ad rates and additional revenue it can command from companies. While advertisers have generally complained that Facebook doesn’t offer the same degree of transparency on rates and metrics that other platforms do, Facebook plans to improve its offerings in this area. The company previously launched a measurement council staffed by marketing and advertising executives who will provide feedback on Facebook’s metrics, the Wall Street Journal reported.