Why Meta's “Engaged Views” Is a Distraction, Not a Solution

Meta recently announced the roll out of a new metric/attribution called “engaged views”. Meta defines this new metric as “a non-click conversion attribution that measures conversions occurring after a person views a substantial portion of a skippable video ad, and converts within 24 hours.” This means you now have 3 ways to look at Meta performance in platform - click through, view through, and engaged views. While additional data can be useful, we must question whether this new rollout is truly a solution or merely another diversion. Here is why:

Engaged Views Attribution Still Relies on the Meta Pixel

As the industry bids farewell to cookies, Meta's reliance on "pixels" for conversion tracking becomes increasingly precarious. With Google's confirmation that 3rd party cookies will cease support by 2024, pixel-based data will be more modeled than actual. Unfortunately, "Engaged Views Attribution" could fall victim to these privacy-driven changes, casting doubt on its reliability in the future.

Engaged Views Attribution is Correlative, Not Causal 

In the case of Engaged Views Attribution, Meta will take credit for all conversions that happen 24 hours after a person viewed a substantial portion of your video ad but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the video is what CAUSED the consumer to convert. Maybe the consumer would have converted despite seeing that ad - this is especially true for retargeting ads. Platform reporting relies on correlation, not causation. It’s not a good gauge of incrementality and therefore is not accurate in demonstrating the business impact of the media. One could argue this is just another generous way for Meta to grab credit for conversions. 

Engaged Views Creates a Greater Delta in Ad Platform Reporting vs 3P Reporting

Engaged Views creates a widening gap between ad platform reporting and 3rd party attribution reporting. Attribution providers like GA4, which rely on click-based reporting, cannot capture "engaged view conversions" due to their dependence on different data sources. This discrepancy further complicates performance evaluation and makes comparing results across channels difficult. Even Google's "Engaged Views" conversion offers a different definition, making it an apples-to-oranges comparison.

What To Use Instead

While Meta's "Engaged Views" metric may seem enticing, it's essential to critically evaluate its long-term viability and reliability. Rather than adopting a new metric that will become increasingly inaccurate, it's time to focus on future proofing your measurement with the use of incrementality experiments. Utilizing a test and control methodology, you are able to measure the true causal impact of your advertising. Haus makes this easy with GeoLift – you can configure on-demand region experiments in minutes so you can test your hypotheses, measure incrementality, and make the most informed investment decisions possible. It's imperative to figure out how you can validate and augment your platform reporting through objective 3P measurement solutions. 

Haus can help with that. 

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