Google Gets Inflated Payments From 'Artificial Views' of TrueView Video Ads: Complaint

Google charges advertisers “hefty amounts for the privilege of autoplaying their advertisements into the void,” said a breach of contract class action Wednesday (docket 5:23-cv-03685) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose.

Plaintiffs Dashawn Williams and Devon Holmes allege Google charges advertisers for its proprietary TrueView video ads, promising the ads must be “skippable, audible” and that playing the video and ad “cannot be solely initiated by passive user scrolling.” That “is not true,” said the complaint: Many of the TrueView advertisements “are, in fact, displayed as muted, auto-playing videos either ‘out-stream’ or obscured on independent sites.”

Google nonetheless charges a “premium price,” promising the ads it places will run on high-quality sites, before a page’s main video content, with the audio on, “and that brands will only pay for ads that are not skipped,” the complaint said. It cited a May Adalytics blog post allegedly exposing Google’s “scheme,” with research suggesting Google violated standards about 80% of the time for one sample client.

Only 16% of a major infrastructure brand's TrueView skippable instream video ad budget was spent on YouTube.com or YouTube apps, said the complaint. Most of its budget was spent on “tens of thousands” of different websites or mobile apps that make up the Google Video Partner (GVP) network, it said. Most of the GVP mobile apps and websites served the TrueView skippable in-stream video ads in “outstream, muted, auto-playing, interstitial, and/or nonvisible ad slots -- which are inconsistent with the TrueView or skippable in-stream ad format,” the complaint said.

Advertisers, “contrary to their expectations,” had their ads placed as “muted, auto-playing video ads on third party websites such as lebanonfiles.com and freewebnovel.com, or on foreign-developed Android mobile gaming apps for toddlers,” said the complaint. The TrueView practice violates Google’s policies, is “deceptive” and “serves no purpose but to further enrich Google," which "charges a premium for these TrueView advertisements and receives inflated payments due to artificial views of TrueView advertisements,” it said. Members of the public considering advertising via Google “have the right to accurate information regarding the advertising platform that they are purchasing,” it said.

The plaintiffs -- Williams of Yorktown, Virginia, and Holmes of Paramount, California -- were injured by Google’s breach of contract and violations of consumer protection statutes, said the complaint. Plaintiffs seek injunctive relief preventing Google from continuing to make “material misrepresentations and omissions in publicly available documents” that keep California advertising consumers from accessing truthful and transparent information about its practices, said the complaint. Alleging violation of the California Unfair Competition Law and unjust enrichment, plaintiffs seek an order forcing Google to refund overpayments for TrueView ads, plus punitive and exemplary damages, restitution, attorneys’ fees and legal costs, it said. Google didn't comment.