Facebook Dumps Plan To Cut Off Device-Level Data After Advertiser Revolt

Facebook has reversed a plan to cut off device-level data collection for mobile app advertising campaigns after a revolt by game developers and advertisers.

In May, Facebook told ad buyers, developers and mobile measurement partners that it would no longer share data about how their mobile app ads were performing on specific devices. Facebook campaign results would be limited to ad- and campaign-level data. The policy change originally was to go into effect on August 20, but it was delayed until November 4 after strong opposition from game makers, which was detailed in a Venture Beat piece last month.

Facebook’s position was — and still is — that device-specific information about how ads are performing isn’t that valuable. App marketers strongly disagreed.

As AdExchanger reported today: “In particular, game makers such as Supercell and Kabam, many of whom spend millions of dollars a month to drive and optimize installs of their apps “… balked at what they saw as an unfair restriction on their ability to optimize campaigns across mobile ad networks and media sources. They also feared a data power grab by Facebook, whose relationships with logged-in users across their devices is at the heart of its ‘people-based marketing’ strategy.”

On Tuesday, Facebook backed down and notified advertisers it would continue to provide device-level data.

“We want advertisers to evaluate Facebook ads based on how well they’re achieving business objectives,” wrote a Facebook spokesperson in an email to Marketing Land. “We advise our advertisers to apply people-based measurement solutions so they can determine when they’re reaching multiple people, not just multiple devices. While we believe device-level reporting is not the most accurate way to properly determine advertising effectiveness, we want to provide advertisers with the choice to measure ads based on what is important to them. In order to provide that choice, we will continue giving advertisers the option to receive device-level reporting from our mobile measurement partners for mobile app ads.”