Facebook’s Latest Carousel Gaffe Sparks Further Calls for Third-Party Scrutiny

Despite its most recent collaboration with verification company Meetrics, Facebook’s latest miscalculation in ad impressions has sparked further calls for further third-party scrutiny.

The response followed news that user-generated clicks from some of Facebook’s mobile carousel placements, which were made to expand images or play videos, had been misattributed as link clicks resulting in erroneous charges to advertisers.

Facebook has since resolved the issue but hasn’t escaped further pressure from the industry to improve the regulation of its advertising under the watch of third parties.

Taking responsibility

“It’s hard to gauge whether Facebook’s move to come clean on misattributed clicks is a genuine step in the right direction, or just another damage limitation exercise,” commented CEO and founder of marketing tech consultancy Appraise Digital, Neil Eatson.

Eatson believes providing full transparency is a key responsibility for the industry’s biggest ad tech players, Facebook and Google.

“The headlines of this year have unfortunately proven what many of us in the industry already know: today’s marketing tech landscape is complicated and is in great need of a robust, third-party regulator,” he added.

The social network has repeatedly highlighted its belief in driving transparency through third-party verification. At the beginning of the year, it partnered up with ComScore, Integral Ad Science and Moat, joining forces with Meetrics in March.

Despite these efforts, Eatson asserts that regulators should not be led by interested parties, such as media agencies or advertisers, and instead should be “completely neutral”.

“At the minimum this needs to be an IAB initiative, if not government-led too,” he said, adding that Facebook’s honesty over miscalculations today is “another case of a business marking its own homework”.