LinkedIn has agreed to pay $6.625 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit accusing it of overcharging advertisers by inflating video ad view counts on its platform.
This preliminary settlement, filed on Thursday in a federal court in San Jose, California, awaits approval from U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen.
Despite denying any wrongdoing, LinkedIn has also committed to hiring an outside auditor to review its ad metrics for the next two years.
The lawsuit, led by advertisers TopDevz of Sacramento, California, and Noirefy of Chicago, claimed the company inflated ad metrics by counting video ad “views” even when videos played off-screen as users scrolled past them.
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The lawsuit was initiated two weeks after LinkedIn revealed in November 2020 its engineers had fixed software bugs potentially causing overcharges to more than 418,000 advertisers, most under $25.
The settlement pertains to U.S. advertisers who purchased ads on the networking site between January 2015 and May 2023.
Neither LinkedIn nor its owner Microsoft responded to requests for comment on Friday.
LinkedIn is based in Sunnyvale, California, while Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond, Washington.
Microsoft’s profit totaled $66.1 billion for the nine months ending March 31.
Judge van Keulen had dismissed the lawsuit in December 2021.
Advertisers appealed but paused the appeal to mediate the dispute.
The advertisers’ lawyers may seek up to $1,656,250, or 25% of the settlement amount, for legal fees.
Neither LinkedIn nor its owner Microsoft responded to requests from Reuters for comment on Friday.
