iWorld
Facebook to reduce unintentional ad clicks, announces new metrics
MUMBAI: Facebook, last October, outlined what it will take to create a healthy advertising ecosystem: great experiences for people, meaningful business results for advertisers, and sustainable growth for publishers.
Ad placements that are built to drive unintentional clicks run counter to that goal. While they can be profitable for publishers, they fail to deliver good experiences for businesses or people. For advertisers, these kinds of unintentional clicks can drive down the value of their campaigns.
Over the next few months, Facebook will be making updates to stop delivering to ad placements that encourage unintentional clicks. These updates include policy clarifications on unintentional clicks, product changes to invalidate these clicks, and proactively pausing implementations that exhibit abnormal click behavior.
Removing unintentional clicks from Audience Network: When browsing across the web or in an app, ads may pop up in places that cause people to accidentally click on them.
Facebook is no longer counting Audience Network clicks where people “bounce back” in under 2 seconds. FB found that these clicks are almost always unintentional.
Total campaign impressions: FB is providing two new metrics to offer clarity on the number of ads shown to people including gross impressions, auto-refresh impressions.
Utilizing Signals About Intentional Clicks
To understand if a click is intentional, one of the metrics FB looks at in FB delivery models and quality detection systems is “drop off rates” — the time a user spends on the landing page of an ad. Facebook found that people who click on an Audience Network ad and spend less than 2 seconds on a destination page almost always clicked accidentally. Moving forward, FB will no longer count clicks categorised as unintentional. Facebook will continually refine and adjust this threshold as Facebook gathers more data and signals.
Pausing Implementations with Abnormal Behavior
Publishers sometimes create ad experiences that fail to deliver true advertiser value. This can be due to implementation error, or because the ad is in the wrong flow of the app experience. When Facebook sees abnormal behavior, such as an inflated click-through rate (CTR), it will automatically pause placements to protect people and advertisers. Facebook also inform publishers so they can make necessary changes.
Clarifying FB Policies
FB also heard from publishers that they want more examples of FB policies, and specifically how to create better native ad experiences. So it recently updated FB policies with clear examples to avoid unintentional clicks (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/audience-network/policy), and went a step further by introducing a new policy that prohibits clickable “whitespace” on native ads. By requiring users to click on an advertiser asset, FB expects to see further reduction in unintentional clicks.
Going forward, FB will be experimenting with more ways to reduce the number of unintentional clicks by looking further into bounce rates, additional metrics, and trying to prevent users from accidentally clicking in the first place.
iWorld
Instagram to curb reach of repost-heavy accounts in new update
Original content to get priority as reposts lose visibility on Explore and feeds.
MUMBAI: Copy, paste, repeat? Instagram is ready to hit unfollow on that strategy. The platform is tightening its grip on repost-heavy accounts, signalling a clear shift towards rewarding originality over aggregation. As part of the update, Instagram will stop recommending content from accounts that primarily repost others’ work across key discovery surfaces, including feeds and the Explore tab. The change expands existing restrictions that were earlier limited to Reels, now covering photos and carousel posts as well. While reposted content will still be visible to an account’s existing followers, its chances of reaching new audiences through recommendations are set to shrink significantly.
At the heart of the move is a push to clean up clutter. Instagram is targeting aggregator accounts that recycle content without adding meaningful value, aiming to reduce duplication and elevate the visibility of original creators.
The platform has also clarified what qualifies as “original”. Content created directly by users whether photos, videos or substantially edited material will continue to be prioritised. Even when using existing formats or templates, posts that bring in fresh humour, commentary or creative edits will still make the cut.
What will not pass muster are low-effort tweaks. Adding watermarks, making minor speed changes or reposting screenshots even with credit will not be considered original and will not be eligible for broader distribution.
Importantly, the update will not affect what users see from accounts they already follow. But for creators relying heavily on reposts, visibility beyond their existing audience could take a noticeable hit.
In a platform driven by discovery, that shift matters. Instagram’s message is simple, if you want to be seen, start creating not just curating.
