Three advertisers have sued Facebook in a federal class action, accusing the social networking company of overestimating the average amount of viewing time for video ads over the last two years.
"As a result of Facebook's 'fraudulent' conduct, plaintiffs and members of the class expended money on advertising that they would not otherwise have spent based on a false belief that the advertisements were more successful than they actually were," claims the action, filed in federal district court in San Francisco.
The lawsuit was brought by Tom Letizia, Mark Fierro and Greg Agustin Jr., the New York Post reports. They are public relations and marketing professionals.
The three are seeking unspecified actual and punitive damages.
In August, Facebook said that it artificially inflated the average time people spent viewing videos by as much as 80 percent from 2014 to 2016.
The company, based in Menlo Park, Calif., attributed the error to a miscalculation in how Facebook determined its video-ad viewership.
A Facebook representative told the Post that the lawsuit was "without merit."
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