• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 27, 2023

Google was hit this week with a lawsuit accusing it of bilking advertisers who purchased skippable video ads.

Google charges advertisers “hefty amounts for the privilege of autoplaying their advertisements into the void,” Virginia resident Dashawn Williams and California resident Devon Holmes allege in a class-action complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The complaint centers on Google's “TrueView” skippable video ads which, according to the company, run on YouTube or “high-quality” sites in Google's video network. Google also said users would be able to skip the ads after five seconds, and advertisers would only pay for ads that were not skipped.

“Google promises that TrueView advertisements must be skippable, audible, and playing of the video (and ad) cannot be solely initiated by passive user scrolling,” Williams and Holmes allege. “However, this is not true: many of the TrueView advertisements are, in fact, displayed as muted, auto-playing videos either 'out-stream' or obscured on independent sites.”

The complaint largely draws on a June Adalytics report that found up to 80% of the TrueView ads served to sites in Google's video network violated the company's standards.

According to that report, “significant quantities” of TrueView skippable ads “appear to have been served on hundreds of thousands of websites and apps in which the consumer experience did not meet Google’s stated quality standards.”

The report added that many of TrueView in-stream ads “were served muted and auto-playing as out-stream video or as obscured video players on independent sites.”

Google disputes the report.

“The claim that up to 80% of ad placements in [Google Video Partners] are below Google’s standards is utterly false,” Marvin Renaud, Director of Global Video Solutions at Google, wrote in a July 13 blog post.

He also said Adalytics used “irresponsible and faulty methodology.”

“Just because an ad is served, doesn’t mean we charged the advertiser,” Renaud wrote. “The report ignores or is unaware of this distinction and incorrectly assumes that a served impression is automatically billed. We actively monitor the Google Video Partners network, using a combination of automated filters and human reviews, and if our systems detect invalid traffic, we don’t bill an advertiser.”