Facebook introduces new ad metrics and promises that more are coming

Facebook says it’s introducing a number of new measurements for businesses that buy ads and own Facebook Pages.

Last year, the company admitted that it had been misreporting some metrics — individually, none of the mistakes seemed particularly serious, but cumulatively, they created the impression that the company needs to work harder on transparency for advertisers. (It’s also opened up for an audit from the Media Rating Council.)

Similarly, none of the new metrics that Facebook is announcing today may make that big a difference individually, but the company says they’re part of a broader initiative.

“We’ve heard feedback from businesses that they want more transparency and understanding around their Facebook performance,” Facebook said in a blog post. “As part of our commitment to measurement, about every month or so we’ll release new metrics so that businesses have better ways to measure outcomes, all in one place.”

The most interesting new metric is called “landing page views,” which tells advertisers how many users actually made it to their mobile landing page after clicking on an ad.

According to Facebook, this measurement should “help businesses realize the importance of optimizing for a better mobile web experience.” This has been a recurring theme at Facebook, which has been trying to circumvent slow web experiences by bringing more of that content into Facebook itself through formats like Instant Articles (for news publishers) and Canvas (for advertisers).

Other new metrics include a breakdown of whether or not people who click on an ad had previously interacted with the advertiser’s website or app.

And there are new measurements for Facebook Pages — the growth or decline of followers, the number of people who encounter Page information (without clicking on the Page itself) through previews and the number of times a Page has been included as part of someone’s recommendations.