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The advertising industry let out a collective groan in September when Facebook admitted<\/a> a \u201cdiscrepancy\u201d in its reporting that led it to overstate how much time, on average, viewers were watching video.<\/p>\n Because\u00a0the error was huge \u2014 numbers were inflated as much as\u00a060-80 percent<\/a>\u00a0for two years \u2014 and in Facebook\u2019s favor, some were quick to ascribe sinister motives. At the very least, it showcased the folly of trusting a media company to provide its own metrics.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have also been calling for a long time for media owners like Facebook and Google not to mark their own homework and release data to comScore to enable independent evaluation,\u201d Martin Sorrell, chief executive officer of WPP,\u00a0told Bloomberg<\/a>. \u201cThe referee and player cannot be the same person.\u201d (It should be noted that WPP has invested in the research from comScore.)<\/p>\n Advertisers buy Facebook video on a cost-per-view basis that counts a view at three seconds or more, so marketers didn\u2019t pay extra for the error. The stats did, however, foster the impression that Facebook videos were more effective than they actually were, which likely prompted marketers to spend more than they had planned.<\/p>\n For marketers, this once again illustrates the monopolistic position of Facebook and Google. Barring a Microsoft-like government intervention, it\u2019s FaceGoogle\u2019s world now, and we must all adapt. Assuming, however, that Facebook wants to create goodwill in the market, here are five ways marketers can push the social network to do the right thing:<\/p>\n The reality is, no one really knows if Facebook was being devious here or merely sloppy. Either way, many brands were deceived into thinking their ads were working better than they were. That shouldn\u2019t happen. Marketers have enough to worry about without trying to figure out who\u2019s telling the truth and who has their finger on the scale.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n