LinkedIn found two metrics glitches that led the platform to miscalculate videos and impressions, but in an email the company says it will provide refunds and offer more transparency in the future.
"We are committed to the transparency and integrity of our ads products," Gyanda Sachdeva, vice president of product management at LinkedIn, wrote in an emailed statement. "This commitment guides us as we improve our offerings and systems to help ensure we maintain a trusted platform.”
LinkedIn's advertising team found the glitches in August. They fixed two measurement issues in its advertising products that may have over-reported some Sponsored Content campaign metrics for impression and video views.
Combined, the issues potentially impacted more than 418,000 customers for about two years. More than 90% of customers saw an impact of less than $25, but the company says it’s working with all impacted customers to provide full credit to their accounts.
advertisement
advertisement
LinkedIn now is working with the Media Rating Council (MRC) to audit its metrics, collaborating with Moat by Oracle Data Cloud to measure video viewability, and investing in improvements to its processes and systems.
Earlier this week, LinkedIn also released its Transparency Report for the first half of 2020. In the six months since its last report, the company has seen an uptick in the number of requests included in its Government Requests Report.
In summary, the company said it has stopped an effort that tried to create more than 33 million fake accounts. Its technology blocked 98.4% of all fake accounts.
Members also increasingly reported spam and scams, which helped LinkedIn find and remove the abusive content. While hate speech, harassment, adult, and violent content ticked up, the company removed most of it.
Between January and June, LinkedIn reported that it removed 22,846 instances of misinformation, including misinformation related to the global COVID-19 pandemic.