The Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv reports that Facebook is misinforming advertisers about the number of users in the Oslo area. The question is whether the company’s visitor statistics can be trusted at all.

Norway has a very high Internet presentation, but we have always found the number of 2.6 million registered users to be too high. That would mean that half of the 5 million inhabitants have Facebook accounts.

Only Iceland has a higher Facebook usage per capita.

Facebook tells advertisers that it has 1.6 million users in the capital Oslo. The problem is that Oslo has no more than 600,000 inhabitants. If you count the greater Oslo metropolitan area, the number increases to 900,000, but even if all of them used Facebook this would not be enough

Facebook’s press spokesperson Jan Fredriksson tells Dagens Næringsliv that Facebook is using IP addresses to identify where the users come from.

Given that Oslo is an important Internet hub, that could explain part of the discrepancy. But not all, though. Espen Grimmert, Market Director of the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten says that the Facebook advertiser tool tells him that there are 850,000 Facebook users between the age of 20 and 29 in Norway. Too bad there are only 613,000 people in this age cohort in the country.

For most other Norwegian cities the number of Facebook users is lower than the number of inhabitants. The coverage is suspiciously high for some of them, though. The coverage in Tromsø is 67.6 percent, in Ålesund 79.4. The coverage in Stavanger is 101.1 percent.

Fredrikssons admit that the advertiser tool is “a guide that is to help advertisers design a campaign” and that it is not always exact.

Facebook says it has 400 million users world wide.

Image: Oslo Opera House by Snøhetta. Photo: Susanne Koch.