Facebook ad click numbers are inconsistent with other analytics

Facebook has a history of fraud in their other services. Veritasium fell victim to FB&#x27;s scams as a publisher a couple years ago[1].<p><pre><code> I know first-hand that Facebook&#x27;s advertising model is deeply flawed. When I paid to promote my page I gained 80,000 followers in developing countries who didn&#x27;t care about Veritasium (but I wasn&#x27;t aware of this at the time). They drove my reach and engagement numbers down, basically rendering the page useless. </code></pre> They also have a history of encouraging video fraud[2][3].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=L6A1Lt0kvMA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=L6A1Lt0kvMA</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q</a>

I think the explanation here is that Facebook tracks clicks on the banners on their site while the author of this post tracks page views using GA or other tools. These are two different metrics. In between lies (at least one) redirect (from Facebooks click tracker to your website) plus a full load of your website. There are a lot of visitors who click but never make it to the second link: Be it because they accidentally pressed the link (very likely) or because they decided otherwise and aborted.<p>I&#x27;d still go with your conclusion that it is difficult for the advertisers to track whether the ads pay of if you are paying per click. I would not go as far and say that Facebook is doing fraud or scam.

Comapring apples and oranges.<p>Facebook ad clicks are not the same thing as advertised website&#x27;s uniques&#x2F;visitors&#x2F;hits&#x2F;sessions&#x2F;whatever. Especially if the latter is using external tracking that uses JS and tends to be blocked&#x2F;opt-out by some.<p>Facebook clicks are really &#x27;clicks&#x27;, not &#x27;unique people clicking&#x27;, they are also not &#x27;successfully redirected after click&#x27;, maybe not even &#x27;click successfully finished and not reverted by aborting&#x27;. It just means someone clicked or tapped on the thing used to advertise.<p>So yes, you get what you pay for, and in the case of Facebook it&#x27;s their definition of a &#x27;click&#x27; you are paying for.<p>By the way: You get pretty close to their numbers when using a redirect script that loads in a few ms and just writes &#x27;hits&#x27; to a database and then again redirects to you to your normal target website. Not 100%, but much better than using GA or any other external tracking on the target website.

This is very interesting, especially when using two separate analytics software to see that Facebook is not producing accurate numbers. Has the author considered reaching out to a tech journalist and seeing if they&#x27;d be interested in pursuing an investigation? Seems if Facebook has a little heat on them, they&#x27;d at least explain the discrepancy.

Since the article title is linkbait (if not both misleading and linkbait), we changed it as the HN guidelines request (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>). But if anyone can suggest a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it again.

&gt; tail &#x2F;var&#x2F;log&#x2F;nginx&#x2F;access_log | grep &#x27;your_landing_site&#x27; | grep &#x27;facebook&#x27; | wc -l<p>How about run something like this for an actual concrete number of visitors, rather than relying on JS tracking? That&#x27;s much more concrete evidence.

Reminds me of this thread from a few years ago here on HN when a clothing company accused Facebook of similar: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4312731" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4312731</a> .. <i>&quot;Facebook was charging us for clicks, yet we could only verify about 20% of them actually showing up on our site.&quot;</i> and other stories from HN users.

It should be taken as a given that these networks are going to inflate their stats and really be more expensive than they look. The conflict of interest these platforms have in presenting an accurate analysis of clicks v. making money for clicks is just too intense to expect anything else.

I&#x27;ve been working with Facebook&#x27;s ad api since its alpha days, and I can tell you that this problem has always been there. This is not just with Facebook - its a many other mobile&#x2F;display ad networks as well. That is why clients insist on using 3rd party tracking solutions - they trust those numbers better. We are used to seeing discrepancy between reported impressions and clicks ON the ad platform and those reported by 3rd party tools. Its just the way its always been, and I&#x27;ve never heard an explanation that sounded plausible enough to be repeated to a client.

Few thoughts:<p>* Was your GA reporting period covering the day? The reporting always defaults to up until yesterday for me<p>* AdBlockers! Facebook click tracking may use backend metrics while GA is frontend, and blocked by various adblockers.<p>I&#x27;ve really enjoyed Segment.io, you can track GA page views etc via the backend which could provide better metrics ¯\_(ツ)_&#x2F;¯

We tried using FB ads and the differences in what FB was reporting and actual traffic were pretty big. It felt like one giant advertising scam and we shut it down a couple years ago. It may work very well for certain consumer segments but I greatly question the numbers they report. It&#x27;s not a company that has earned my trust.

I am a fresh graduate and I am working for the digital marketing department. Any suggestions on tracking the clicks on Facebook? It would be better if the tool can integrate different social platforms.

I experienced this fraud as well, and knowing their policy about default reaching... this is a real shame. We ended up doing less and less facebook ads.

Oh, look, it does&#x27;t actually matter. What matters is whether or not advertising on Facebook, or anywhere else, actually makes you more money. Instrument that, calculate bang&#x2F;buck et voila.