Facebook recently announced it would start focusing on “engagement” when ranking applications in its application directory. The change in methodology has had negligible results- mainstream users utilize the “Recently Popular” section of the application directory to find new apps, and developers are still in the dark as to how that section works. So user engagement is a great re-brand of applications’ purpose, but it doesn’t mean much for their success rate.

Now the old metric, total user number rankings, has been broken for a few days. A previously active tool bar that allowed developers to track the number of users for their apps has been malfunctioning. While Facebook has confirmed it’s merely a glitch, developers should still be worried. It doesn’t matter what Facebook says about active users or activity- real user numbers still matter. Doubt it? Just look at Facebook’s ad card.

Facebook sells advertisements at a CPM (cost per thousand) rate across the site. In an age of specifically measurable media (we can not only tell when a user clicks on an ad, but also when a user actually buys a product), you can only explain display rate ads in one way- companies are building a brand. Of course Coca-Cola ads don’t have a clickthrough rate, Facebook might argue. But the next time a user is at a vending machine, they’ll think about Coke. That makes it logical to use display ads, even though the return is abstract.

It’s branding by volume of impressions, not clicks. Or, in other words, Facebook measures ad quality by views, not engagement. If that measure is good enough for the people paying money to appear on Facebook, then it should definitely be at least a part of the measure for those who are investing time, money, and effort to help the platform flourish.