One of the Facebook advertising specialists, Rok Hladnik, who is also the CEO and founder of a boutique performance agency, is dealing with the new Facebook platform that is mostly bug-ridden. It used to be a moneymaking machine, but now, the dynamics have completely changed.

Rok Hladnik shares his terrible experience with Facebook ads. Half of his Facebook ad accounts stopped working suddenly. The ad campaigns were also seen to be working in the wee hours when they should have been inactive. It leads to a significant increase in ad spending. He also got in touch with a Facebook representative, according to whom, the campaigns are messed up because of the few backend changes they have made. However, when it keeps happening regularly, the platform loses its credibility and users’ trust.

Inconsistencies Infest Facebook’s Pillar as the Source of Truth

According to Madan Bharadwaj, cofounder of the ad attribution company, Facebook and Google have been sources of truth for advertisers. They have accepted all the changes, but that doesn’t seem to be the case now. The bugs have made it harder for agencies and advertisers. They used to analyze the performance of their campaigns based on Facebook Reports, but recently, these reports have been showing significant fluctuations in ad spending. 

For years, these fluctuations used to indicate that something is wrong with the ad copy or creative or that the page it is being linked needs to be fixed or addressed to improve the ad’s performance.

Now, these fluctuations have become a norm that cannot be trusted. It doesn’t even tell you about the performance of the campaign. However, Facebook is trying to play around with its mechanism to figure out a new attribution system.

Hladnik has supported the approach of Facebook in this matter somehow. According to him, the biggest issue is communication which is further leading to greater problems. Also, Facebook has warned advertisers that it is not going to attribute actual conversions but will rather use more systematic attribution.

Communication Is Key

On the other hand, David Herrmann, who is a social advertising consultant, stated that Facebook should have done more than this to help advertisers, partners, and agencies to tackle the situation through this difficult phase of course correction. He further added that Facebook was constantly updating its platform. 

The way it tried to improve the situation resulted in more weird outputs in ad reports. To provide better communication, Facebook must notify ad buyers and agencies about their maintenance and upgrade schedules to avoid more backlash.

In response to Herrmann’s statement, Hladnik also reflected that it became quite hard sometimes to manage the client’s expectations. Marketers are not first-hand professionals or experts who are aware of the effects and variations of different ad platforms. If Facebook alerts the ad buyers beforehand that it is going to work on the backend, marketers can easily spot why anomalies are showing up in their reports and can find comfort in knowing that it can be fixed. They would also know how to deal with important calls when the bizarre number pops up on the ad reports.

Other than that, marketers are facing the issue of delayed ad reports. Facebook Campaign Report Data used to show real-time conversions to the other site or app. Now, the data consists of larger batches that show thousands of accounts at a time after every two to three days. Facebook informed the advertisers about this issue as well. They were asked to optimize the campaign a few days later until the data builds up to enable the platform to get results.

These issues affect advertisers and brands differently. Large-sized brands are less concerned about this sudden disruption in Facebook attribution technology. For instance, the Toyota Company, with highly priced items, is less affected by the Facebook ad platform. Similarly, McDonald’s, with a diversified ad budget, doesn’t get bothered by the two- to three-day delay in ad reporting.

Surprisingly, some smaller businesses were also successful in dealing with these technical issues of Facebook. They do this by breaking down every information they get about the platform audience into smaller pieces to find the best possibilities while targeting the audience, optimizing their ad, and changing the ad spend level.

Can Facebook Gain Back People’s Trust?

Facebook is responding to their clients’ concerns and asking them to be patient and slow down. It has acknowledged that it is failing to report the attribution, but it had reduced the margin of error from 15% to 8%. 

The point to ponder, though, is where this statement is coming from. Every time Facebook tries to make any progress, the attribution report gets hit by a tsunami. Eventually, ad buyers will stop trusting the Facebook report data to analyze their campaign performance.

The tools Facebook is using to fix their Dark box ad platform are even darker. “What is it doing to get back the trust level of publishers, ad buyers, and agencies?” It doesn’t give its clients a detailed insight into what is being fixed in the backend. 

Advertisers used to trust Facebook results before, but it seems that won’t be the case anymore. According to Hladnik, Facebook built its ad dominance on the idea that it is the best in the market when it comes to data and algorithms. But now, the base has been shaken. It is not what it used to be.

To Sum Up

Facebook attribution technology is under attack by bugs that need to be fixed as soon as possible before its users start looking for alternative solutions to the issues they are facing while running advertisement campaigns and getting delayed report data on Facebook.