Facebook says it’s removing accidental clicks from its ad network

Advertisers on Facebook’s Audience Network will no longer have to worry that they’re paying for users who accidentally clicked on their ads.

I’m betting we’ve all had moments where we were scrolling or swiping or clicking through a website/mobile app and we ended up clicking on an ad without really meaning to. (Those moments probably outnumber the times I’ve intentionally clicked on an ad.)

So Product Marketing Manager Brett Vogel said Facebook won’t be charging for those clicks in its Audience Network (where Facebook runs ads in other apps), and those clicks won’t be included in the metrics shared with advertisers and publishers.

Facebook is sorting out unintentional clicks by discounting instances where a user bounces back after two seconds or less. After all, if you clicked on an ad and then immediately clicked back, you probably didn’t care about the ad.

Still, Vogel said the two-second threshold is a “starting point” that Facebook can adjust if necessary.

Publishers may worry that this change could hurt their bottom line, but Vogel said the “vast majority” will not be affected, because their ads aren’t driving a significant number of unintentional clicks. He added that Facebook is making the change for the good of the ecosystem.

“Unintentional clicks end up delivering really poor experiences for people and advertisers,” he said. “It’s not a good path for publishers to build sustainable businesses.”

In addition, Facebook is also announcing that it’s making new ad metrics available (it’s been making a broader push around this).

Those metrics including gross impressions, a number that combines billable impressions with non-billable impressions — advertisers aren’t paying for things like non-human traffic, but some of them have still asked to see the numbers. Facebook is also adding auto-refresh impressions (those are ad impressions for banners on the right-hand side) and gross auto-refresh impressions.