Facebook underreported iPhone traffic to Instant Articles tracked by comScore from Sept. 30 to Nov. 30; report says some publishers' numbers affected by 10-20%
Facebook announced on Friday that it had made another measurement error, this time affecting publishers that use its Instant Articles content platform.
Context & Ripple Effects
Instant Articles was pitched to publishers in 2015 as a faster iPhone reading experience, with NYT, BuzzFeed, and the Guardian among the launch partners, but adoption has been cautious ever since — publishers held back sharing articles after the initial rollout. The pitch only works if Facebook's numbers can be trusted, because publishers host their content inside Facebook's app and depend on its reporting.
This disclosure lands at the worst possible moment: just days after Facebook admitted a batch of engagement measurement errors, some of which fed into The New York Times' and BuzzFeed's own fake-news coverage. An undercount of iPhone traffic by 10-20% for two months is a different kind of error — it shortchanges publishers rather than inflating reach — but it compounds the same credibility problem.
First-order effects
- Publishers running Instant Articles spent September 30 through November 30 with comScore-tracked iPhone traffic understated by 10-20%, meaning audience reports they sold against and editorial decisions they made were based on wrong numbers.
Second-order effects
- Coming on top of the earlier engagement-stat disclosures, each new error gives publishers another reason to favor their own sites — where they control the analytics — over Facebook-hosted formats, weakening the case for Instant Articles itself.
Third-order effects
- With this marking one error in what became a string of Facebook measurement admissions through 2017, advertisers and publishers are pushed toward independent verification and audited metrics as a condition of trusting any platform-reported number.
The trend: Platform-reported metrics are losing default credibility, pushing the publishing and advertising industries toward independently verified measurement.