• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 23, 2018

Facebook plans to make changes to the advertising metrics it reports in a move that will give advertisers greater transparency into the way they measure campaign performance. The metrics will help marketers with paid and organic social campaigns as well as those related more to search within the site.

The move follows a series of measurement problems that have spanned about two years, as well as challenges that marketers face with attribution and analysis of data from their campaigns.

The changes, reported in a blog post, list the removal of roughly 20 reporting metrics that will take place in July 2018.  Facebook acknowledges that these metrics were either redundant, outdated, not actionable or rarely used. Making ad metrics clearer by measuring what matters is the theme. The changes also include renaming some of the metrics and explicitly pointing out when the ad metric is, in fact, just an estimate and not a finite number.

One of those metrics that will be eliminated -- the social reach metric -- shows the number of people who saw an ad with social information above it. This metric, which notes such information as friends who also like a certain brand, is not meaningful enough to keep.

The list of metrics also provides information on reasons for the removal of certain metrics and suggestions for metrics that marketers should consider using instead. For example, Facebook will remove the Page Mention metric, and suggests using the Page Likes metrics or the Page Engagement metric instead.

The Measure What Matters program, which accompanies these new metrics, is intended to educate marketers. The program will roll out in March, and two tracks will become available -- one for advertisers focused on brand objectives and one for advertisers with direct-response objectives.

Facebook explains that each track will draw from research and analysis across creative planning, ad delivery, cross-channel measurement and video measurement. The idea is to share insights through in-person events, Facebook Live events, and on the Facebook Business website.