Hey, remember how Facebook announced that they would be changing how the News Feed works which would likely result in a drop in your Page reach? Turns out that’s not the only measure that could see your reach decline – this week, Facebook has confirmed another change, this time to their reporting methodology, which could also result in you seeing fewer impressions.
Well, not really – the change is only in their reporting process, it won’t actually reduce reach itself.
As explained by Facebook:
“For Pages, we’ve historically calculated reach based on how many times a post was delivered in News Feed, but for paid ads, we use a stricter definition that only counts reach once a post enters a person’s screen. Starting Monday, we will update how we measure organic reach of Pages to be more consistent with the way we calculate reach for ads. This is a change in the way that we measure reach, not a change in News Feed distribution, and other engagement metrics will remain the same.”
Essentially, Facebook’s updating the way your Page reach stats are reported to make them more accurate. But that could also mean you see a drop.
“This will provide Page owners with a more precise measurement of their audience and offer a more consistent measurement methodology across both our paid and organic reach reporting. Since this is stricter reporting, some Pages may see lower reach figures than before.”
How big of a drop can you expect? Facebook ads expert Jon Loomer warns that measuring only actual, viewable impressions, as opposed to News Feed ticks, could see reach decline by up to 20%. But it’s not really declining, it will just look that way because the data is more specific – which, really, is a good thing, though no doubt not all will see it as such.
Facebook also knows this, and to help ease the shift, they’ll continue reporting both the old and new measurements for a period to help Page managers better understand the change.
“We know some marketers may rely on the previous metric for their own reporting, so over the next few months we will continue to provide the old reach metric alongside the new one in the Page Insights overview section and in the Page Insights API and export.”
So, you can expect your Facebook reach to start declining – but it won’t necessarily be due to the coming News Feed changes or anything you’re doing. Make sure you keep tabs on all your key measurements, and cross-check against the old and new reporting numbers, and you should be able to maintain a clear vision of what’s happening with your figures.
In addition, Facebook’s also updating the layout of Page Insights on mobile to make it easier to see your key performance measures at a quick glance.
“With this redesign, we’ll put the most commonly used metrics up top which include:
- General Page diagnostics, such as number of likes, reach and engagement
- Results of actions recently taken, such as recent post performance
- Preview of new Page engagement, such as demographic information on new followers”
The new Insights measurement format will begin rolling out to all users on Monday, while the updated mobile Page Insights layout is being made available from today on both iOS and Android.