How the Latest GDPR Privacy Policy Updates Have Affected Organic Metrics on Facebook and Instagram

If there’s anything that the previous year has taught us, it’s that change can happen quickly. Keeping on the pulse of a rapidly changing industry allows marketers to stay agile and make strategy adjustments as needed. So far, we’ve seen the increased importance of having a social media presence alongside a social commerce strategy, the meteoric rise of TikTok, and new tools and features to leverage on Instagram and Facebook. Most recently, Facebook and Instagram have made changes to messaging-related features and metrics to comply with GDPR privacy policy updates.

What Changed?

While historical messaging-related data will still be available for both European and non-European brands, these new changes will affect the way both groups of brands measure KPIs moving forward. If you manage a business account within the European Economic Area (EEA) on Facebook or Instagram, you’ll no longer be able to track organic messaging-related metrics. If you manage a business account outside of the EEA you’ll still be able to track these metrics, however, users that live within the EEA that have engaged with your business will not be tracked. Some examples of the organic metrics that will not be available on Facebook include:

• New conversations
• Messages sent and received
• Response time and rate
• Commerce messaging-related metrics

The organic Instagram metrics that will be affected include:

• Content interactions
• Post shares
• Story shares
• Story replies

What Does This Mean For Brands?

An adjustment will need to be made to understand channel performance. Whether you’re within the EEA or not, the above changes will affect your benchmarks if these messaging-related metrics are part of your brand’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). For those brands outside of Europe, seeing partial data for non-European users may also skew your success metrics.

Which Metrics Should You Focus On?

Determining which metrics to focus on is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Your brand’s marketing goals along each stage of the funnel determine how success is measured across organic Facebook and Instagram channels. As a general rule, actionable metrics will help tell a story about your social performance and indicate what next steps should be taken. For example, measuring your content’s effectiveness rate on both Instagram and Facebook will indicate if your content is resonating with the audience that is actually seeing it on their feed. Additionally, measuring your Instagram Story completion rate is a good measure of how thumb-stopping and engaging your content is.

How Dash Hudson Can Help

If you’re wondering how this will affect your experience with the Dash Hudson you know and love, worry not. There is a minimal impact on the metrics we can share, however, Instagram Story replies will be affected, either showing zero for those brands within the EEA or showing partial data for brands outside the EEA. Dash Hudson still provides actionable analytics during every stage of content development-from research and ideation to post-campaign analysis and provides the insight your team needs to continuously improve your brand’s visual strategy and stay ahead of the competition. Using our AI and machine learning, your team can surface the insights you need to understand your brand’s performance in the market without the legwork. It’s easy to identify industry trends, monitor competitor performance, measure the value of your influencer programs, as well as pinpoint where your audience is converting.

For more information, you can read Facebook’s summary of changes within the Facebook Business Help Centre.

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