Facebook now reports fan impressions so page owners can better understand their audience

Facebook now reports fan impressions so page owners can better understand their audience:
Facebook has added four new metrics to its Insights API that help page owners understand how many fans versus non-fans are seeing their posts.
Starting this week, Facebook is providing the following new metrics:

• Post impressions fan – The number of impressions for a page post among people who have Liked the page.


• Post impressions fan unique – The number of fans who saw a page post.


• Post impressions fan paid – The number of fan impressions that game as the result of an ad, Sponsored Story or promoted post.


• Post impressions fan paid unique – The number of fans who saw a page post in an ad, Sponsored Story or promoted post.

Previously, there was no way to tell how many of a post’s impressions came from existing fans or new visitors who hadn’t Liked the page. These new metrics will help page owners better understand who they’re reaching and how Facebook’s News Feed algorithm works. For example, posts that gets several Likes and shares have higher reach than those with less engagement. It has never been quite clear whether the reach is higher because friends of fans are seeing the activity in their feed, or if it’s because the engagement becomes a signal for Facebook to show the post to more fans than usual. The answer might be both, but now with actual numbers for fan impressions, page owners will be able to know with more certainty.

For now, these metrics are only available via the API, but they should be available in the insights export for “post level data” soon. We’ve heard that this information will also be presented visually to page owners, but the design hasn’t been finalized. We imagine Facebook will put these metrics in the insights dashboard or in the hover card that appears when admins mouse over the reach data below each item they’ve shared.

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