Greeva Garg –
Published on August 05, 2021, at 11:49 AM
A Judge in the United States Court stated that Microsoft Corp’s LinkedIn must face proceedings in a lawsuit claiming that it depicted the increase in the number of people who watched the advertisement videos on its networking platform and overcharged the advertisers for it.
The advertisers sued LinkedIn after on November 12 they said that its engineers found software bugs three months earlier and then fixed it, otherwise that may have led to more than 418,000 overcharges.
In their lawsuit, the advertisers said the overcharges have left them with the least amount of money to spend elsewhere, including on ads. They are seeking unspecified damages and restitution.
Led by TopDevz Inc and Noirefy Inc, the advertisers said, “LinkedIn had been counting video ad views from users’ LinkedIn apps, even when the videos were playing only off-screen because users had scrolled past them.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen, however, dismissed fraud-based claims and an unfair competition claim mentioning that plaintiff advertisers failed to prove the misrepresentation by LinkedIn,
San Jose, California-based Judge stated that, “Let the advertisers pursue claims based on the theory that bot traffic, errant clicks and fraudulent clicks inflated the metrics they relied on when buying LinkedIn ads.”
The Court has directed that the plaintiffs could try to pursue their dismissed claims again, and advertisers should file a fresh lawsuit with strong claims and evidence supporting their case.
Also read: New opportunity granted to LinkedIn to block Data-scrapping in its app