Meta Platforms is asking the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of a lower court's order allowing advertisers to proceed with a class-action fraud lawsuit over inflated metrics regarding the potential reach of ad campaigns.
That order, which certified a class of at least 3 million advertisers who purchased ads through Ad Manger since mid-August 2014, failed to account for the differences between those advertisers, Meta argues in its petition.
Meta's request, filed late last week, comes in a lawsuit dating to 2018, when business owner Danielle Singer alleged in a class-action complaint that Facebook induced advertisers to purchase more ads, and pay more for them, by overstating the number of users who might see the ads. (Singer later dropped out of the litigation, and DZ Reserve, which operated an e-commerce store, and Max Martialis, which sold weapons accessories, took over as lead plaintiffs.)
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The initial complaint cited a report by the industry organization Video Advertising Bureau, which said Facebook's estimates of audience reach in every U.S. state were higher than the states' populations. The plaintiffs added in an amended complaint brought in 2020 that Facebook employees were aware of complaints about the potential reach metric since September 2015.
Meta had urged a trial judge to reject the plaintiffs' request to proceed on behalf of a class, arguing that advertisers on the platform didn't have enough in common to warrant class-action treatment.
A trial judge rejected Meta's argument. The company then appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which also sided against Meta in a 2-1 decision.
Meta now wants the Supreme Court to intervene.
The company argues that questions about how the potential reach estimate affected advertisers call for case-by-case determinations, rendering class-action treatment inappropriate.
The class certified by the trial judge includes “millions of diverse advertisers ranging from sole proprietors to Fortune 500 companies -- with a correspondingly wide range of advertising budgets,” Meta writes, adding that the amount by which the potential reach was inflated varied by advertiser.
Meta also says many of its advertisers based decisions on factors other than the potential reach estimate -- such as whether web users clicked on ads or made purchases.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sided with Meta in the lower court, arguing in a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the 9th Circuit that Meta's advertisers received individualized metrics, and therefore don't have enough in common to be able to proceed as a class.