Pomerantz LLP represents named Plaintiff and putative class representative IntegrityMessageBoards.com in a putative class action against Facebook, Inc. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Northern District of California and indexed under 4:18 -cv-05286 PJH, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons and entities, other than Defendants and their affiliates, who used Facebook’s Ads Manager software, seeks to recover compensable damages caused by Defendants’ violations of California's Unfair Competition Law, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17200, et seq.
Rather than charging users to access its platform, Facebook generates revenue by selling advertising on its platform to businesses seeking to market their products to Facebook users. Facebook collects data concerning its users, such as age, gender, work, education, location, etc. The Complaint alleges that during the relevant period, Facebook also "acquired data concerning user demographics such as household income and homeownership from third party data providers." Using this data, Facebook allowed advertisers to tell Facebook the type of user they wished to target, and Facebook represented that it would show the advertisements to the those types of users. Plaintiff alleges that, contrary to Facebook’s targeting-related representations, Facebook programmatically displays a material percentage of ads to users outside the defined target market and displays ads to “serial Likers” outside the defined target audience, in order to boost Facebook’s revenue. Facebook’s conduct harmed Plaintiff because Plaintiff paid for all “impressions” and “Likes” generated by Plaintiff’s campaigns, even those programmatically displayed to users that Plaintiff’s ad campaigns did not target. On February 20, 2019, the Court denied Facebook’s motion to dismiss, and the case is proceeding.
If you used Facebook’s Ads Manager software and believe that you may have been harmed by the same conduct alleged by Plaintiff, or would like additional information, please contact Ari Basser at abasser@pomlaw.com or (310) 436-6496.