Facebook Class Action Filed Over Inflated Video View Statistics

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Three Nevada residents are suing Facebook alleging the social networking giant greatly overestimated average viewing times for video ads on its platform for the last two years, leading ad-buyers to believe their posts were more successful than they actually were.

The proposed class action lawsuit follows Facebook’s recent disclosure on its “Advertiser Help Center” that its metric for the average time users spent watching videos was artificially inflated because it was only factoring in video views of more than three seconds.

In May 2014, Facebook introduced “video metrics” as providing advertisers with information “like video views, unique video views, the average duration of the video view and audience retention,” and promoted the new metrics as being “designed to help you learn what’s resonating with people and determine how to more effectively create and promote your videos on Facebook.”

However, just a few weeks ago Facebook admitted that since May 2014, it only counted video views of more than three seconds when calculating its “Average Duration of Video Viewed” metric. Video views of under three seconds were not factored in, thereby inflating the average view time.

In fact, Facebook admitted to the Wall Street Journal that as a result of its error in calculating the viewing statistics, the average time users spent watching videos was “artificially inflated by 60 to 80 percent.”

The company said it was introducing a new metric to fix the problem.

Plaintiffs Tom Letizia, Mark Fierro, and Greg Agustin Jr. filed the proposed class action lawsuit against Facebook Thursday saying they were scammed by the inaccurate data about consumption of their video content across the social network.

Each plaintiff purchased video advertisement placement from Facebook, relying on the Facebook duration metric to monitor how much time consumers were spending viewing their advertisements.

However, the plaintiffs allege that that the video advertisements purchased were being viewed by their targeted audiences for a significantly shorter duration than Facebook represented.

“By misrepresenting the average time its millions of consumers spent watching posted advertising videos, Facebook induced advertisers, like Plaintiffs, to continue to purchase video advertisements based on the belief that the advertisements were more successful than they actually were,” the Facebook class action alleges.

According to court documents, the plaintiffs are bringing claims for violations of unfair, unlawful and fraudulent conduct under California business laws.

The class action lawsuit goes on to say that “as a result of Facebook’s unfair conduct, [Plaintiffs] and the proposed class expended money on advertising that they would not have otherwise spent, or overspent for advertising on the Website based upon Facebook’s representations that their video advertisements were being viewed at much longer durations that the time actually viewed.”

The plaintiffs are seeking to represent a nationwide Class of Facebook account holders who paid for placement of two of more video advertisement of 10 seconds or more in duration from May 4, 2014 to Sept. 23, 2016.

They are asking the court to award general, special, and punitive damages.

The plaintiffs are represented by Robert T. Eglet, Robert M. Adams, and Erica D. Entsminger of Eglet Prince; and Joseph A. Motta of Rueb & Motta.

The Facebook Inflated Ad View Times Class Action Lawsuit is Tom Letizia, et al. v. Facebook Inc., et al., Case No. 3:16-cv-06232, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.