Facebook Flat-Out 'Lies' About How Many People Can See Its Ads, Lawsuit Alleges (theregister.co.uk)

A new lawsuit claims that Facebook exaggerates how many people can see its ads, thereby defrauding advertisers. "In other words, it is alleged not quite as many eyeballs are seeing Facebook's ads as its salespeople charge for," writes Thomas Claburn via The Register. From the report: In a complaint filed on Wednesday in a US district court in Oakland, California, plaintiffs Danielle Singer and her company Project Therapy, LLC claim the Potential Reach and Estimated Daily Reach figures that Facebook provides to advertisers are wildly inflated. As an example, the complaint claims that Facebook's purported Potential Reach among 18-to-34-year-olds in each U.S. state is greater the actual population of 18-to-34-year-olds in each of those states.

"Based on a combination of publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, among 18-34 years-olds in Chicago, for example, Facebook asserted its Potential Reach was approximately 4 times (400 per cent) higher than the number of real 18-34 year-olds with Facebook accounts in Chicago," the complaint states. And in Kansas City, the complaint asserts, the number provided by Facebook was 200 per cent higher than the actual number of 18-to-54-year-olds with Facebook accounts in the area. What's more, the court filing contends that former Facebook employees, described as confidential witnesses, have acknowledged that Facebook is fine with inflated numbers. The attorneys representing Singer and her biz, which supposedly spent over $14,000 on Facebook ads, are seeking class-action certification in order to represent other affected Facebook advertisers. According to the complaint, "a former Facebook employee who worked in the infrastructure/mapping team stated that those who were responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the Potential Reach at Facebook were indifferent to the actual numbers and in fact 'did not give a sh--.'" They also said the "Potential Reach" statistic is "like a made-up PR number."

Comments

Unpossible!

[Brett Buck]

This can't possibly be true! A major corporation would never ever lie about a completely unverifiable "fact" just to make money!

Re:Unpossible!

[rtb61]

Modern social media marketing is only interested in a particular set of eyeballs, to the exclusion of all other eyeballs, the eyeballs of the sucked in paying for the advertising, actually paying for it, paying billions in real cash, not with invasions of privacy, although those idiots paying for the advertising, are those most targeted by digital psychoanalysis at a distance, to monitor which forms of targeted at them advertising is the most effective to get them to spend billions of dollars on digital advertising.

So which form of targeted advertising gets the gullible few to spend billions on advertising, 'we can control the minds and choices of our users by targeting their preferences' advertising, targeted at those who spend billions on advertising and they pay to plant those stories all across the internet, without them being branded as ads targeted at the gullible few who pay for ads.

Proof of how well that works, well, billions spent on ads without proper checking of what returns those ads really generate. Look at the history of ads though https://www.youtube.com/watch?..., as US president as a lame arse soap salesman, no wonder he could sell gullible idiots, he was trained at it. The civil suit reflects how they feel when they realised how worthless the ads are, drowned in a flood of other ads, they people ignore and entirely worthless.

Technically the best place to put consumables ads at the moment, is computer games, not as billboards, that just pisses people off but as branded products in games, tricky though. In general digital media, as sponsored content, the argument being, you do not support the argument being presented, but do support freedom of speech and want to let the people judge for themselves as long as the content is legal. The lead in for sponsored content should be pretty clear, and the company should present it's own ideals at that moment and then of course product placement in the content. Controversy generates interested viewers and it doesn't hurt if that controversy targets competitors for end users pockets. Keep in mind in high debt societies, indirect competitors should be targeted ie non-competing product but competing for user spare spending ie a holiday resort versus netflix account vs fashion clothing vs excess alchohol consumption vs a gas guzzling car ie want people to spend more on content consumption, trash gas guzzling cars and promote low cost fuel efficient vehicles, which releases money or more accurately accessible debt back into the market which can then be targeted.

Re:Unpossible!

[pgmrdlm]

https://www.factcheck.org/2008... Notice this is from 2008, way before the previous election? The reason that the Constitution calls for this extra layer, rather than just providing for the direct election of the president, is that most of the nationâ(TM)s founders were actually rather afraid of democracy. James Madison worried about what he called âoefactions,â which he defined as groups of citizens who have a common interest in some proposal that would either violate the rights of other citizens or would harm the nation as a whole. Madisonâ(TM)s fear â" which Alexis de Tocqueville later dubbed âoethe tyranny of the majorityâ â" was that a faction could grow to encompass more than 50 percent of the population, at which point it could âoesacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.â Madison has a solution for tyranny of the majority: âoeA republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.â As Alexander Hamilton writes in âoeThe Federalist Papers,â the Constitution is designed to ensure âoethat the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.â The point of the Electoral College is to preserve âoethe sense of the people,â while at the same time ensuring that a president is chosen âoeby men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.â

Stupid crooks....

[gweihir]

Smart crooks at least make sure the numbers are somewhat plausible. They probably started small and found that nobody actually noticed. Then they just kept inflating the numbers, completely unaware that there is a hard upper bound. It really does not get much more stupid than this.

1980s scams are back

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the 80's, fake London newpapers would call advertisers and offer them advertising print runs in the "Islington & Highgate Gazette" of 50,000. Newspapers like this were fake, non-existent, they had plausible sounding names but little else. They'd ring advertisers seen in real media, get bookings, print off 50,000 copies, send one to each of the advertisers, and one for their lawyers, then pulp the rest. Then the same company would ring them about advertising in the "Chiswick and Hounslow Courier" with a print run of 100,000.... The Newspapers were a few stock articles and mostly adverts from companies suckered in.

The BBC, set up a anonymous facebook page with zero advertising and zero reason for people to like it, and they got loads of likes from across the world. What struck me is how Facebook must be behind that, because how else would the people in third world countries *know* about the new pages, let alone who would *pay* them to like these pages? I assumed it was to puff up FB's numbers prior to its IPO.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/29505104

Facebook claimed it was companies paying third parties to like the page to make it more popular.... but the BBC DID NOT PAY OR TELL ANYONE ABOUT ITS 'Virtual Bagel' empty FB page. So Facebooks explanation about these likes seems false.

So now you're telling me they lie to advertisers and the lies are whoppers, easily verified to be fake.... well yeh, but FB were never prosecuted for the alleged securities fraud last time, because there was no proof, and they won't be this time, because they'll pretend a 'reach' number is some vague metric without legal meaning.

Just like the newspapers I mentioned.... they never said "sales of 50000", they said "print run of 50000" .

Facebook has ads?

[CharlesAKAChuck]

ublock origin and FB purity for the win...

The dot-com economy is doomed

[alternative_right]

I remember when the web was first starting up, people were wondering which model it would follow: newspapers, television, radio, or libraries.

I suggested the library model since in my view, there was no money to be made off of the net in the way that would support a whole industry.

It seemed at first that I was wrong, and then these studies came out:

1. Natural Born Clickers
2. The Click Remains Irrelevant

These tell us that 8% of the users account for 85% of the ad clicks, and these users tend to be from households with yearly income under $40,000.

In other words, advertising on the internet does not reach the audience it wants, but instead is mostly taken up by the people who spend a lot of time on the internet because they have no other form of recreation.

This has been exacerbated by the bots which take up 28% of internet traffic, the use of ad blockers, and the tendency of experienced people whose time is valuable to avoid the internet since its audience now seems like daytime TV watchers after the mobile era began in 2007.

Since those studies have come out, we have seen the big companies trying to jockey "we have a lot of warm bodies" into "our advertising is valuable," when all credible data suggests the opposite.

In other words, assume the crash position.