We all have had moments when we were scrolling or clicking through a website or mobile app and ended up clicking on an ad without exactly intending to. For the user it’s just a click gone wrong and it’s no big deal but the poor advertiser would have been charged for the click. Now, Facebook is modifying its policies and things up a bit in the advertising front, especially how it charges advertisers for click-based campaigns.
According to Facebook, ads will be categorized as unintentional, as if, a person accidently clicks an ad on a mobile device, immediately retracts within few seconds, they will not be charged to the advertisers. So the advertisers on Facebook need not to worry that they are paying for users who unintentionally clicked on their ads. Facebook wants to be transparent in its relationship with advertisers. Now advertisers will be able to see how many actual clicks an ad received and impressions, caused by bots doesn’t show up on their bills.
Facebook wants to be transparent in its relationship with advertisers; publishers may worry that this change could hurt their bottom line, but according to product marketing manager Brett Vogel the “vast majority” will not be affected, since ads aren’t driving a significant number of unintentional clicks and this change is, for the good of the ecosystem.
Not only Facebook, Google also focused on this issue and its efforts to restrain accidental clicks on mobile web have prevented tens of millions of unintentional clicks. This collective effort helps improve experience with mobile ads and puts pressure on advertisers, publishers and tech companies to use formats that are less annoying. Facebook also introduced a number of changes to the way it reports total campaign impressions. It’s now going to report total campaign impressions including both total billable and non-billable impressions.