Facebook Reaches More People Than Exist

Facebook claims it can reach more young people than exist in UK, US and other countries.

12:21 10 September 2017

Facebook claims that it can reach more millenials and people in other demographics than actually exist in the UK, US, Australia, Ireland and France.

 

In the UK, the giant social networking site says it can reach 7.8 million users aged between 18 and 24. However, the Office of National Statistics says there were only 5.8 million people in that age group in the whole country in 2016. Similar discrepancies were also found in different countries around the world in Facebook’s key markets.

 

Brian Wieser, a senior analyst at Pivotal, said that the gap is not widely known among ad agency executives. He added: “While Facebook’s measurement issues won’t necessarily deter advertisers from spending money with Facebook, they will help traditional TV sellers justify existing budget shares and could restrain Facebook’s growth in video ad sales on the margins,”

 

Meanwhile, Michael Karg, group chief executive of media and advertising auditing firm Ebiquity, said: “This is yet another self-reporting error by Facebook that doesn’t help it re-establish confidence with advertisers and the market. They have been trying to improve things like transparency, but once again they are having issues.”