Facebook gets sued for allegedly inflating potential reach
Facebook is in hot water again and has been served up a lawsuit for allegedly misleading advertisers by inflating its audience reach, multiple media reports stated. Danielle Singer, owner of Project Therapy, a small business focusing on aromatherapy, filed a class action suit with the US District Court of Northern California, claiming that Facebook has “overstated” the potential reach of its ads, “vastly inflating” the amount of active users targeted by the ads. She also claimed that Facebook required advertisers to pay higher prices for ads.
Multiple media reports said that Singer had alleged Facebook claimed last year that the potential reach for its ads in Chicago was approximately 1.9 million individuals between 18 and 34 years old. However, census data showed that the number of Chicago residents within that age range was 808,785. A+M has reached out to Facebook for comment.
It comes as no surprise that often Facebook and Google are the go to platforms to reach audiences. In a conversation with A+M, Entropia’s senior partner Prashant Kumar said that Facebook is a media company that makes money by selling media inventory. “Much like other traditional media sales companies, when it puts forth reach numbers, it likes to project the most favourable numbers possible,” he said.
“Unlike traditional media, the new age Silicon Valley giants like to be both the player and the referee. So, they want to measure themselves and each one have their own way of doing it,” Kumar said. As a result, this makes things complex and can frequently be biased, at times misleading. He added:
"It’s a real problem, since real monies are involved."