As the fallout from last week’s ‘My Screen – Video consumption in Australia’ report by PwC and Facebook continues, one industry executive says we’re focussing on the wrong issue.

After the revelation Facebook had ‘paused’ its distribution of the report last week, the incident has escalated into nothing short of an industry drama.

Author of the report Ben Shepherd has criticised Nielsen‘s role in the drama – despite no longer being with PwC – while Nielsen has since defended itself.

But according to ThinkTV CEO Kim Portrate, we shouldn’t be talking about who made a miscalculation, we should be looking at Facebook’s advertising services.

“This is not a debate about the PwC report,” Portrate said.

“This is a debate about how effective Facebook video advertising is as a platform for marketers.

“As already established this week, data shows Facebook’s desktop video has an audience of 4.547 million.

“There may be upwards of 17 million reading text content on the platform but there is a considerably smaller percentage of people watching video.”

She also referred to OzTAM Data, which according to Shepherd was used in the report, to suggest “TV reaches more people in a single day than Facebook desktop video does in a month”.

Viewability issues have long been a problem for the social media platform.

In 2016 Facebook was found to have inflated average video watch times, causing advertisers to demand viewing metrics be checked by third-party auditors and eventuating in a lawsuit.

And even with Facebook introducing its ‘Watch’ platform to provide advertisers with more options, Portrate said TV is still a superior option.

“TV advertising plays full screen with the sound on. Basic stuff. It doesn’t struggle with competing on-screen editorial and there won’t be a problem with the consumer scrolling past your ad in their newsfeed,” she said.

“Advertising on TV and BVOD is remembered for longer than Facebook, almost 100 days longer.

“Consumers forget Facebook video advertising in six days.

“If they see your video ad on any given Monday, it’s forgotten before the week is through.”