No class certification for advertisers who say Facebook charged for fake clicks

No class certification for advertisers in Facebook fake clicks case

A federal judge on Tuesday refused to certify a class of advertisers in a lawsuit against Facebook alleging it improperly charged them for clicks on ads by fake accounts.

"Plaintiff has adduced no evidence of classwide exposure to the alleged misrepresentations other than the mere existence of the misrepresentations on a few of Facebook's webpages, none of which an advertiser would have been required to view before, during, or after advertising on Facebook," wrote U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco.

The lawsuit sought to represent advertisers since 2013 who paid for ads on Facebook based on the number of impressions, or when an ad appeared on a user's screen.

Advertisers claimed that Facebook represented to them that it would refund them for instances in which an ad was engaged by a fake account. They pointed to a statement in which the company stated that they would "not be charged for clicks that are determined to be invalid."

But Alsup held that advertisers did not rely on the statement when purchasing ads because it's "nowhere in Facebook's terms or authenticity policy, nor in any of the terms that apply specially to Facebook advertisers." dotStrategy Co. v. Facebook Inc., 20-cv-00170 (N.D. Cal., filed Jan. 8, 2020).

Facebook is facing another potential class action in the Northern District of California from advertisers alleging that it bloated its advertising metrics. U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco is considering class certification in the case.

-- Winston Cho