This document describes Instagram's ad measurement, filtration and reporting methodologies for Instagram News Feed ad impressions.

It addresses how Instagram seeks to comply with the IAB Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines, the MRC Minimum Standards and the MRC Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Guidelines Addendum (Version 1.0, 15 October 2015). The Instagram service is not currently MRC accredited, but has been reviewed and audited by an external auditor in pursuit of MRC accreditation.

Instagram employs "General Invalid Traffic Detection" techniques as defined by the MRC's Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Guidelines Addendum.

Overview

Instagram is owned by Facebook and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The platform provides a simple way to capture and share the world's moments. Instagram's mission is to strengthen relationships through shared experiences.

Ad placements & ad types

Instagram has one ad placement that is under examination for MRC accreditation. Ads are displayed in the news feed that runs in the mobile app environment only. Additional information can be found here.

The self-serve and reporting interfaces used by Instagram are homogeneous across both Facebook and Instagram.

Ads Manager is a self-serve interface for advertisers to create and run ads, target ad, and set and configure ad budgets, and for reporting. Refer to the following URL for additional details – https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/home/

Advertisers can also programmatically access Facebook's advertising platform from their own advertising tools via the Marketing API. This enables developers to use all the same functionality as Facebook tools within a custom solution. Refer to the following URL for additional details – https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-apis.

Ad measurement metrics

Facebook's system counts impressions delivered and measured in Instagram News Feed on mobile app.

Instagram impressions reported through Facebook's reporting system, Ads Manager, reflect the billable impressions delivered and measured via Instagram ad delivery system.

To review available ad metrics and learn how users are reaching their business goals, see the Get Started Guide to Reports in Ads Managerin the Facebook Help Centre. Note that depending on how customers set up their ad campaigns, some data might not be collected, or may not be available.

Ad impression measurement

For ad impressions displayed in Instagram's News Feed, an ad impression is counted the instant any part of the ad appears on the user's screen (i.e. greater than zero pixel and greater than zero second).

A check is performed as the user scrolls in order to determine whether the ad has satisfied the greater than zero pixel and more than zero seconds requirement for measurement.

• If the check is a SUCCESS, a 1x1 pixel is fired and the impression is counted.
• If the check is a FAIL, the 1x1 pixel is not fired and the impression is not counted.

Gross Impressions (includes invalid impressions from non-human traffic) are defined as the unfiltered number of times that your ads were on screen, including when your ads were shown to detectable invalid or non-human traffic that Facebook filters out.

Instagram allows certain third-party ad tracking tags on its ads but Instagram performs all ad-serving (via the Instagram ad server). No empty FRAME for dynamic ad-serving is involved.

Compound tracking

Compound tracking is not used. Each impression event is individually recorded and measured.

Offline measurement

Offline impressions are stored and resent once the user is back online; however, this must occur within one day of the impression event, otherwise it will be marked as non-billable.

Auto-refresh

Auto-refresh is not used. Each impression event is individually recorded and measured.

Auto-play

Instagram (mobile) News Feed video ads begin to auto-play when the minimum percentage of pixels are on screen. Nearly all video events are auto-play initiated. Autoplay on Instagram News Feed may not trigger if the user selects to use less cellular data.

For each feed request, Instagram ad ranking model determines whether to insert a new ad into the feed. For adverts already shown, it will be kept in the original insertion position for 24 hours.

Geographic location

Instagram leverages GPS data to determine the user's geographic location.

Data logging and processing

Each call to Instagram's http service generates a logging event that is processed through the stream processing infrastructure. Such logging events reach the Facebook reporting service, and the data is aggregated and stored in the Facebook data warehouse. Customers can create and schedule reports based on this aggregated data.

All impressions are logged in the ad logs and counted as "raw" statistics. Facebook processes the raw logs, flags some of the events as non-billable based on a list of rules and outputs the raw data as annotated logs.

Known limitations

Facebook believes the below limitations to be insignificant.

• Caching: Instagram employs appropriate cache busting techniques; however, defeating all caching is not possible.
• Abandonment: Abandonment is a known measurement limitation; however, due to Instagram's technical measurement methodology of not recording the ad impression until it enters the viewport, the impact is believed to be insignificant.

For the purpose of this document, which speaks to Instagram's procedures as it relates to ads delivered on the Instagram app, Instagram is both the "publisher" and "as server".

As a result, Instagram does not maintain material business partner relationships with organisations that are part of the transactional chain associated with serving or capturing ad actions, or enriching ad impressions or audience measurement.

Additionally, Instagram does not "acquire" or purchase traffic.

Filtration methodology

Facebook employs techniques based on identifiers, activity and patterns based on data in the log files in an attempt to detect and remove invalid Instagram activity, including but not limited to known and suspected non-human activity and suspected invalid human activity. Browsers that can be identified as bots are excluded from being able to log billable impressions. However, because identification and intent cannot always be known or discerned by the publisher, advertiser or their respective agents, it is unlikely that all invalid activity can be identified and removed from the report results.

Robot instruction files

Instagram uses robots.txt files to instruct robots that they should not follow or index any links within the domain from which the robots.txt file was retrieved. The robot instruction files are present in all tracking web server instances.

Identification of non-human activity

Instagram uses the IAB spiders/robots black list and the TAG data centre IP black list to exclude non-human and invalid activities. The IAB lists are reviewed monthly and an Instagram user agent blacklist is updated accordingly.

Internal traffic

Instagram filters impressions from Facebook internal locations. Instagram compares an IP address against the entire list of internal IP addresses, which is maintained by Facebook operations teams. Facebook operations teams add/remove IP ranges where Instagram stores internal traffic generated when it tests its production systems under test campaigns. The test data is stored in a test database and is completely excluded from customer data.

Activity-based filtration

Activity-based filtration is determined through analysis of incoming events in correlation with the identified user source and window of time in which the events occurred. If incoming events from a single user source exceed a defined threshold within a given amount of time, subsequent events will be logged but will be marked as non-billable and will not be reported.

Invalid impressions detection and filtration

Instagram has a number of systems in place to detect and remove general invalid traffic, e.g. impressions generated by bots or spiders etc., as well as auto checks for adware, malware, spam accounts, fake accounts etc.

The filters and thresholds used by Facebook to remove invalid Instagram traffic are constantly being monitored and reviewed. The thresholds are updated as needed.

The tools and methods to identify fake and malicious accounts are continuously monitored and evaluated by dedicated teams at Instagram. Formal reviews are performed in which the accuracy and precision of their methods is evaluated.

The methods used by Facebook and Instagram are executed both at the impression level and the user level (i.e. a given impression may be marked as non-billable or a given user may be removed from the network if deemed malicious).

Data consistency and accuracy filtration

In addition to non-human and activity-based filtration, Instagram includes various checks to ensure the accuracy and consistency of the data, such as:

• Time check: Impressions that originated more than a certain time frame are excluded from further processing.
• Activity frequency capping: Impression requests that exceed a certain number per hour are marked as non-billable.

The filters described above affect impression counts and will help distinguish between authentic traffic (a person at a computer who is actively engaging with ads) and invalid or non-human traffic, such as bots and spiders.

Data reporting

The Facebook Help Centre has a section on Reporting within Ads Manager, which includes the list of preset reports, available columns for reporting and how to schedule delivery of reports. Please refer to Ads Reporting in the Facebook Help Centre for more information.

Pre-release quality assurance

Instagram has developed tools to run end-to-end data integrity and consistency checks for quality assurance purposes and does not perform manual data adjustment procedures. Furthermore, Instagram has a set of back-office tools that enable the Instagram staff to monitor activity trends. For example, the streaming process is designed to identify and log for analysis anomalies or corruption in processed data. In addition, Instagram runs checks between raw log files and the data warehouses to detect any discrepancies between the data sets.

Data re-issue/ad refund

If Facebook detects or otherwise becomes aware of issues that impact advertiser data or spend, it follows a formal investigation process in order to determine the cause and impact of such issue. Decisions to provide credit or refunds are made on a case-by-case basis and are dependent on the facts and circumstances of the particular issue. In the event that a credit or refund is provided, advertisers are notified through our platform; however, there are circumstances in which the sales team will contact the advertiser directly.

Data retention policies

Facebook's impression data retention policies vary but comply with the minimum standard required by these guidelines. Customers can run and download reports against this data, though they are responsible for storing older reporting data. This policy is subject to change.

* Nguồn: Facebook