LinkedIn has agreed to pay $6.625 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit accusing the social networking site of exaggerating the number of views of video ads.
The preliminary settlement was filed last week in federal court in San Jose, California, and is pending approval from U.S. District Judge Susan Van Keulen before the payout is confirmed.
LinkedIn, which denies any wrongdoing, has agreed to hire a third-party auditor for two years to review its advertising figures.
LinkedIn accused of inflating video ad views
The lawsuit stems from a complaint filed by Sacramento, California-based TopDevz, a team of developers, designers, project managers and quality assurance testers, who alleged that LinkedIn was exaggerating the number of ad impressions by counting the number of views of videos on the app even as users scrolled past them.
The legal action came just weeks after the Microsoft-owned platform confirmed it had fixed software bugs that had led to more than 400,000 overcharges — a mistake LinkedIn resolved by issuing credits to many affected advertisers.
The $6.625 million settlement covers U.S. advertisers who bought ads on the platform between January 2015 and May 2023 and then overpaid to cover an inflated number of impressions.
LinkedIn’s parent company, Microsoft, confirmed a 17% increase in revenue for the three months ended March 31. The company’s total revenue was $61.9 billion, with LinkedIn seeing a 10% increase in revenue. Microsoft is expected to report its latest quarterly results tomorrow.
TechRadar Pro The company has been asked for comment on the lawsuit, but has not yet received a response.
