LinkedIn recently got into a bit of trouble for errors in measurement in their video advertising. It sounds technical, but simply put, LinkedIn was charging advertisers for videos viewed when the consumer who supposedly viewed them, did not, or the video was not accessible to them on the pages that said consumer visited.
Careless Measurements?
This is a big deal. Most platforms that run ads have a standard operating procedure for what they charge, how the ads are formatted, etcetera. LinkedIn, being somewhat new, or just plainly careless, started pushing their video ads in recent history, and the error in measuring ad views has had expensive consequences.
Mobile Users Find the Problem
Research shows that mobile users are more likely to engage in video advertising in a longer format than on desktops, so it is fitting that these errors were discovered on Apple iOS devices. The ads that LinkedIn were using were said to have been playing off-screen, changing the measurements of their video advertising and thereby pushing the return on ad spend (ROAS) numbers up, passing the bill for these phantom ad views onto the advertisers.
Know Who You’re Working With
It is important to know a litany of ad concepts and services in order to get a return on your investment in video advertising—your target audiences, including age and other social markers, location of strongest markets and how to properly pinpoint ad service in these locations, holes in ad marketing climate, and the list goes on. LinkedIn made an error. That happens in tech—not as often as you would think, but it does. You should expect whoever runs your advertising to be up to date on what is important, and that includes the errors of big tech.
Costly Mistake
According to LinkedIn as reported in the Wall Street Journal “…more than 90{a86fb65c7f931e4d58d1a29ca9c8656ee3a0f1720ff570db52ba165110c5c4eb} of the advertisers affected overpaid by less than $25, adding that it would provide them with credits for future ad campaigns.” So about 400,000 advertisers should be seeing a credit of $25. Twenty-five dollars may not seem like much, but when the error is responsible for Ten Million dollars in refunds or credits, that really hurts the company’s bottom line and overall reputation.
We are Here to Help
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