An error in LinkedIn affected advertising campaign metrics. For two years, advertisers paid more than necessary.
Attention all advertisers on LinkedIn: That commercial network reported yesterday, Thursday, that a measurement error in the advertising products caused some campaigns to be overloaded. This error affected more than 400,000 advertisers during the last two years. The LinkedIn engineering team recently discovered the error.
LinkedIn-Error in video display measurements
In August, our engineering team discovered and then solved two measurement problems in our advertising products that may have over-reported some campaign metrics for sponsored content for print and video views.
Specifically, additional video views were counted due to the error. When users viewed a video on their iOS device and turned their cell phone on, it was counted as an additional view and listed in the campaign metrics. According to LinkedIn, over 418,000 advertisers are affected. More than 90 percent of customers have suffered damage for less than $25 as a result. We are currently working with all those affected to recover their share. While this does not appear to have been a significant negative business for the individual, seen on a large scale, it is a lot of money.
Fighting the damages: how much is LinkedIn’s reputation suffering?
The company is now doing everything possible to repair the damage and is contacting all affected advertisers. A mistake like this can quickly jeopardize a platform’s reputation. To prevent this from happening again, LinkedIn would like to work with the Media Rating Council in the future to audit its own metrics. In cooperation with the measurement service provider Moat, video measurement systems will also be improved.