But how are Facebook users actually using the social network after a decade?

According to a recent survey conducted by Pew Research, 54% of female responders said they use Facebook to view photos and videos, while 42% of male responders said they use it to share with a wide audience — the top two reasons cited by women and men, respectively. Other uses include seeing funny posts, following news and using the platform as a support network.

Created by Statista, the following chart shows the eight “major reasons” that male and female users cited for using Facebook.

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When it comes to Facebook, however, monthly active users have become a mere side dish to the more relevant main course that is “daily active users.” During the company’s Q2 earnings call, there was an entire menu of them: Daily actives worldwide (699 million), mobile daily actives (469 million in June), and even the number of active users during America’s daily primetime television hours (88 to 100 million).

So when Facebook unveiled its daily active users figure for the U.S. last week — 128 million — it didn’t simply break the industry standard, it began the process of rewriting it.

“A lot of people focus on monthly active users or even registered users to demonstrate their size and scale,” the Menlo Park, Calif. company wrote in an email to media. “We think this is becoming on old way of looking at the media world. In this world, understanding who comes back at least once a month is only part of the picture.”

Facebook defines “daily active users” as those who “actively visited/engaged with Facebook.” In other words, active users are considered anyone who uses their Facebook login, even if it’s for a third-party app.

A company spokesperson said the announcements highlighting daily active users won’t come regularly, and that there is still value in monitoring and publishing monthly active users. Facebook’s actions, however, seem to demonstrate its dedication to using the new metric.

For a company with the social-media giant’s user base, there are multiple benefits to releasing daily user figures. For starters, they uphold the network’s position as an industry leader, but these figures can also have a major impact on ad sales by providing marketers with information on exactly who they can reach and when.

“Our clients rely on Facebook to connect their message with the people that matter to them, every hour of every day,” Will Platt-Higgins, Facebook’s director of global accounts, said in a statement. “We want to provide marketers with helpful metrics and insights on consumer behavior, across all devices, to maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns. If a business has a sale on Monday, or if a film is premiering, Facebook gives marketers the certainty that they are reaching the right people, on any given day.”

Of course, changing the industry standard — intentionally or not — requires participation from said industry. Other social networks don’t break out daily active users, although some appear to share Facebook’s mindset.

“We look at a number of signals for engagement, but since most members rely on Nextdoor on a daily basis, it makes sense for us to focus on daily and weekly actives,” Nirav Tolia, co-founder and CEO of Nextdoor, said in a statement. Nextdoor, a social network for neighborhoods, does not reveal its daily active user data.

Path, a social network for close friends and family, has a similar view.

“What we care most about is that people use the app multiple times every day,” Nate Johnson, the company’s vice-president of marketing, said. “We pay very close attention to that.” Path also doesn’t publish daily user data.

Other social networks such as LinkedIn, however, are not convinced.

“LinkedIn will continue to use monthly average users as a way to gauge engagement,” according to a company statement. “Because we focus on the quality of time spent by our members rather than the amount of time, monthly average user continues to be a meaningful metric for advertisers who want to drive engagement over time.”

Both microblogging service Twitter and Google+, the second-most popular social platform behind Facebook based on monthly active users, declined to comment. (Vine, the video-sharing service owned by Twitter reported total registered users on Tuesday, but not monthly actives.)

For the time being, Facebook appears to be in a league of its own, and said it plans to continue releasing monthly active user metrics. After all, it is the industry standard.

Would you rather receive data about a social network’s daily or monthly active users? Give us your take in the comments, below.

Image: Flickr, Robert Scoble

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Kenshoo Social, a digital marketing company that works with “hundreds” of customers that advertise on Facebook, explored more than 75 billion Facebook ads over the past two quarters, finding evidence that the ads are not only working, but are in some cases undervalued. Kenshoo is considered a preferred marketing developer (PMD), meaning the company has been uniquely identified by Facebook as a marketer “driving outstanding positive impact.” In other words, Kenshoo and Facebook work closely together to ensure ad success for both companies.

Facebook advertisers who work with Kenshoo, including brands like Sears, Ticketmaster and CareerBuilder, reportedly saw an 18.5% increase in click through rates in Q2 over Q1, and revenues driven by Facebook ads were up nearly 30%. Click rates increased 16% and user interactions with the ads — likes, shares or comments — also increased by 57%. The research is not indicative of all Facebook advertisers — only those Kenshoo works with — but with 75 billion ads in the sample, it does offer a snapshot of Facebook ad performance.

Even with ad metrics up, advertisers using “last click conversion” attributions — that is, giving the ad credit only if a sale is directly from a user click on Facebook — actually undervalue Facebook ads by 30%, according to Aaron Goldman, the CMO of Kenshoo. This does not give the ad credit in scenarios in which users view an ad and then make a purchase at a later date, still driven by the ad but not immediately from Facebook.

Kenshoo isn’t the only marketing company to claim social media ads are undervalued. Monetate, which offers cloud-based marketing technology to customers, described a similar trend in its Q1 ecommerce quarterly report earlier this year. The report pointed to the “stickiness” of social media as a reason click through rates aren’t higher; users don’t want to leave the page so they store the ad information in their head for later use.

Facebook’s apparent increase in ad success can be attributed to two factors, Goldman said. First, advertisers are getting better at narrowing down their target audiences and honing in more appropriately on users who may find the ad engaging. Plus, Facebook’s algorithm is improving, meaning the site can better pinpoint relevant users within an advertiser’s target audience.

Ampush, another Strategic PMD who works with dozens of companies advertising on Facebook, is also seeing increases in user ad engagement. For Ampush, mobile use and the increase of page post ads and mobile app install ads has been another major driving factor. “The overall growth in mobile has definitely correlated and contributed to the overall trend towards improved ad metrics overall for Facebook,” says Chris Amos, Ampush co-founder and CMO.

A separate recent study by Salesforce Marketing Cloud explored Facebook’s ad performance over the first three months of the year, noting a major difference in ad performance based on region. Both Europe and Asia-Pacific saw substantially higher click through rates on ads than the Americas, with Asia-Pacific more than 60% above the global average. Salesforce, a third Strategic PMD, has not yet released its finding from Facebook’s Q2, and a spokesperson declined to comment on whether or not Salesforce saw increases similar to Kenshoo and Ampush.

Image: Kim White/Getty Images

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