Facebook Accused of 'Vastly Inflating' Ad Audience

Facebook is being sued in a California court for overclaiming the potential reach of its advertising. In the case of Chicago, the suit says the social network's claimed audience figure for 18-34-year-olds was nearly four times the total number reported in the Census.

The class action suit has been brought in the name of Danielle Singer, who owns Kansas-based aromatherapy business Therapy Threads. The suit claims that Facebook's 'misrepresentation of the Potential Reach of its advertisements' induced advertisers to continue purchasing and to pay higher prices for them, by giving them to believe that 'more people could potentially be reached by their advertisements than possibly could have been'.

The last phrase is 'Based on publicly available research and plaintiffs' own analysis': the suit cites research conducted by the Video Advertising Bureau, which found that in 'every state' Facebook claimed ads could reach more 18-34 year olds than the total number identified by the U.S. Census Bureau. Further, Singer says Facebook claimed in 2017 that its ads could potentially reach 1.9m people in Chicago between the ages of 18 and 34, according to www.mediapost.com , while Census data showed a population of only 808,785 such people, of whom her own research suggests only 59% have Facebook accounts. This indicates that Facebook ads potentially reach only 500,000 18-34 year-olds in Chicago, just over a quarter of the claimed number.

The complaint also alleges that former employees of Facebook, cited as confidential witnesses, say the company's 'potential reach' statistic is 'like a made-up PR number', and that 'Facebook was not concerned with stopping duplicate or fake accounts in calculating potential reach'.

Singer says she spent more than $14,000 on Facebook ads between October 2013 and April 2018. She seeks monetary damages and an order requiring Facebook to hire outside auditors and remedy any problems they find.

A Facebook spokesperson said the suit is 'without merit', adding 'we plan to defend ourselves vigorously'. The company is on record stating in 2017 that its reach estimates were based on many factors, and were not 'designed to match population of census estimates'.

The firm also faces a separate lawsuit regarding alleged overstatement of video metrics, live since 2016.