Metrics question
Ad revenue on Instagram increased but user satisfaction decreased. What do you do?
- Meta
- Metrics
- Hard
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
Start a mock interview on this question · Mock interview from a job description
What this question tests
Balancing competing metrics: diagnosing whether a revenue gain is coming at the cost of user experience and long term retention.
How to approach it
- Confirm both trends are real and check the time window and segments involved, not just aggregate numbers.
- Hypothesize the link: increased ad load or lower quality ad targeting could be driving both revenue up and satisfaction down.
- Segment satisfaction decline by user cohort, such as heavy versus light users, to see who is most affected.
- Check leading indicators of long term harm, like reduced time spent or increased app uninstalls among dissatisfied users.
- Recommend a path forward, such as capping ad frequency or improving targeting quality, and propose a metric to monitor the trade off ongoing.
What a strong answer includes
- Explicitly connects the two metrics through a plausible mechanism, like increased ad load, rather than treating them as separate issues.
- Looks at leading indicators of churn, not just the satisfaction score, to judge real long term risk.
- Recommends a concrete guardrail going forward, like a maximum ad load threshold tied to a satisfaction floor.
Common mistakes
- Treating revenue growth as an unambiguous win without probing the satisfaction data.
- Failing to segment satisfaction decline, missing that it may concentrate in the most valuable users.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you decide if this trade off is worth it long term?
- What guardrail would you set to prevent this from recurring?
More metrics questions
- How would you measure the success of Facebook Likes?Meta · Metrics · Medium
- How would you measure improvements made to Facebook messenger?Meta · Metrics · Easy
- Imagine you are the PM in charge of Reactions on Facebook - the new way to interact with posts by using “love”, “haha”, “wow”, “sad”, and “angry” reactions. What would success look like in terms of number of non-like reactions per post at launch and how do you come up with this? Would this number differ by reaction? Why or why not?Meta · Metrics · Hard
- You launched a new signup flow to encourage new users to add more profile information. A/B test results indicate that the % of people that added more information increased by 8%. However, 7 day retention decreased by 2%. What do you do?Google · Metrics · Hard
- Define the metrics for YouTube search.Google · Metrics · Medium
- You are the PM of Instagram app. The MAU has been constant but DAU has declined. What will you do?Meta · Metrics · Medium
More questions from Meta
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 2: Data fluency: SQL, logs, and reading the truth yourself
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop