Facebook Class Action Says Advertising Reach Numbers are Inflated

An aromatherapy fashion business owner in Kansas has initiated a Facebook class action lawsuit arguing that the demographic data points shared by the company in relation to advertising rates are misleading.

The plaintiff in the Facebook class action lawsuit, Danielle Singer, argues that the potential reach figures touted to business owners placing ads on the social media website are grossly overinflated.

According to the Facebook class action lawsuit, the social media giant provides details of “possible reach” to prospective advertisers but these numbers are not accurate given the number of people who live in that particular location.

Singer says publicly available research and her own analysis led her to the conclusion that Facebook is inflating their possible reach and advertising prices as a result of this.

The Facebook advertisements class action lawsuit says that as a result of this misleading information, the plaintiff and others purchased more advertisements from Facebook and had to pay a higher fee than was warranted based on the number of people in particular age categories living in the geographic locations specified in the case.

The Facebook class action lawsuit says that putative Class Members could include anyone who had an account with Facebook and paid for advertisements there from Jan. 1, 2013 and beyond.

Singer says that consumers in this category are entitled to recovery in the form of compensation and injunctive relief under California’s Unfair Competition Law.

The Facebook advertising stats class action lawsuit says that consumers are being misled about the possible pool of people within a given reach for an advertising budget and since Facebook has failed to verify and audit the accuracy of the potential reach statistics the proposed Class Members were subject to suffer injury under California’s Unfair Competition Law.

The Facebook class action lawsuit states that in particular, the number of 18 to 34-year-olds who could be reached in Chicago via a Facebook ad is higher than the actual number of 18 t0 34-year-olds currently living in Chicago.

The plaintiff argues that the reach of possible 18 to 34-year-olds in Kansas City is also inflated, especially since not all 18 to 34-year-olds living in a particular location will have a Facebook account.

Singer also claims that anonymous witnesses who worked for Facebook will back up the allegations that the potential reach numbers are indifferent. Facebook defines “potential reach” as the number of people who are situated in the ad’s target audience from the people who could see it each day, a number known as the estimated daily reach.

In 2017, Facebook earned about $40 billion from advertising revenue.

The plaintiff is represented by Andrew Friedman, Geoffrey Graber, Eric Kafka, and Julia Horowitz of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Charles Reichmann of the Law Offices of Charles Reichmann.

The Facebook Advertising Stats Class Action Lawsuit is Danielle A. Singer, et al. v. Facebook Inc., Case No. 3:18­-cv­04978, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.