In a move that would surely be welcomed by advertisers, Facebook recently announced that it will no longer bill accidental clicks on ads placed by clients of its Audience Network. Of course, this also means that the incentive for publishers to drive ad traffic via an unintentional action is no longer there as well.

Since accidental clicks do not really add anything to an advertiser’s bottom line, Facebook announced on August 8, 2017, that it will stop charging for these clicks, Ad Age reported.  At the moment, the social media giant defines accidental clicks as incidents wherein a user clicks on a mobile ad that backtracked in less than two seconds.

Facebook says it’s removing accidental clicks from its ad network: https://t.co/yllVOuvXin #facebook #ads #payment pic.twitter.com/9lChVVFh3q

— Vintuitive⚡️? (@Vintuitive) August 8, 2017

The two-second threshold is meant to distinguish an accidental click from an intentional click on an ad by a Facebook user. The reasoning is that persons who backtracked within the two-second period, were highly likely to have clicked on the ad by mistake, Tech Crunch reported. This two-second threshold may be adjusted in the future if necessary.

There are usually two ways people accidentally click on a mobile ad. It is common for folks to “fat-finger” when clicking on options given the large size of their fingers compared to the buttons on their gadget’s menu. Another scenario is that publishers may have configured or placed the ads where they can be easily clicked on without the user meaning to. An example of this is a pop-up ad that suddenly appears in the middle of a game that requires tapping the screen to play.

With the update in place, Facebook also announced that there are new ad metrics available to advertisers. For instance, the gross impressions figure, which includes both billable and non-billable clicks, are now available to advertisers. Other metrics being added are auto-refresh as well as gross auto refresh impressions.

#ICYMI: @facebook stats and takeaways your #marketing gurus need to know ➡️ https://t.co/ivhklag0ja.

— SaleAMP (@SaleAMP) August 8, 2017

Brett Vogel, Facebook’s Product Marketing Manager, assures publishers that the change won’t significantly affect their profits because unintentional clicks only account for a very small percentage of total click volume. In addition, weeding out unintentional clicks from the equation is seen to benefit everyone in the long run.

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

[Featured Image by Pixabay]