418,000 LinkedIn advertisers overpaid for two years due to the wrong metric

LinkedIn overcharged 418,000 advertisers for ads for two years because of the wrong metrics used to measure their impact. In most cases, these were small amounts, the company says.

It concerns more than 418,000 advertisers who placed Sponsored Content ads on the platform. They paid too much money for their advertisements for ‘more than two years’, the company writes in a blog post. LinkedIn discovered that problem in August. Two metrics for impressions and video views would have been incorrectly measured. According to the Wall Street Journal, a video that buffered but wasn’t viewed would still be recorded as watched. Messages in the feed would also be incorrectly marked as read.

In most cases, advertisers paid a small amount too much. Ninety percent of customers would be less than $ 25, but it is not known how much more the other 10 percent overpaid. LinkedIn says customers will get that money back. The platform also hires an external company to study and improve the metrics in more detail.