Facebook wants advertisers to look at sales, not clicks

Facebook is trying to convince advertisers that ad impressions on the social site still count and will continue pushing sales to users. Beginning today, Facebook will report to advertisers and let them know when someone saw their ad on Facebook ended up buying something from that brand and how it compares to people who purchased an item without seeing the Facebook advertisement. This new program, aptly named "conversion lift measurement," was in its test period more than a year ago but is now being rolled out to all advertisers.

The launch of this program is an effort to pull advertisers away from credit-based awards (such as Google) and show them the value of the ad just living on the page. As far as Facebook is concerned, awarding a credit-based value on an ad that someone clicks on negates all the other ads that the user might have seen before deciding to click on the ad (this is called "last click attribution).

This method has become the default way to credit companies for ad clicks because it's the easiest to track. Facebook will track these measurable conversations by taking the list of people who were shown the ad on Facebook, then they will compare that list with a list of people who acted upon a purchase such as purchasing it from the store or an online shopping cart.

Since this program is only being launched today, we won't know the successes until a few months down the road.