At this week's Big Data Innovation Conference, hosted by the IEG Group, Facebook confirmed the release of real time data. The company had alluded to work on this new metrics tool in previous months, and today released it. Facebook Page Insights now reports data with a latency of 5-10 minutes, not two or more days.
This type of data is critical for marketers who can use it to do things like amplify a well-performing post’s reach with ads, delete negative feedback, and use other social media strategies. Until now, marketers couldn’t measure, amplify, or pull a negative post until it was largely too late. You’d make post, then only see the data on it a few days later. It was a slow, manual process. Marketers would download it, do some analysis in a spreadsheet, and try to theorize on how and why posts performed the way they did. It was all highly reactionary and not actionable until days or weeks later.
The real-time insights made available through Facebook's API give marketers a real-time pulse on their Facebook Page performance. As it is an API, tool developers can manipulate and use this rich data into relevant actionable analytics. This can give businesses the understanding necessary to drive better ROI. And, of course, this is good for making Facebook even more attractive for brand advertising.
These thousands of data points now include insight into how many views, clicks, media consumptions, and spam marks are made. It's a win for marketers and a win for Facebook.
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