LinkedIn Glitch Led To Inflated Video And Ad Metrics For More Than Two Years

Microsoft Corporation's MSFT professional network LinkedIn found a measurement issue that overstated the video ad metrics in sponsored campaigns for more than two years, the company said in a blog post.

What Happened: LinkedIn's engineers had found the issue in August and claimed to have fixed it. According to the company, the issue impacted more than 418,000 advertisers over two years, and more than 90% of customers saw an impact of less than $25.

The professional networking company is giving full credit to the impacted customers that can be used for future campaigns.

Organic videos and video ads would play while off-screen on Apple Inc's AAPL iOS devices. If a user scrolled past a video while buffering, the ad would autoplay even when out of view and logged as a video view or completion, reports the Wall Street Journal.

LinkedIn also said that it might have overreported impressions on sponsored-content campaigns in the feed when users rotate their phones.

Why It Matters: LinkedIn's error comes years after Facebook Inc FB came under the scanner in 2016 for overestimating average viewing time for more than two years. 

WSJ reports that advertisers have demanded greater transparency and third-party auditing of the metrics provided by social-media giants.

LinkedIn said that it began working with the measurement watchdog, Media Rating Council, to audit its metrics. The company is also working with Oracle Corporation ORCL-owned measurement firm Moat to measure the video's viewability portion.

Price Action: MSFT shares closed lower by 0.51% to $215.44 Thursday.

Image Courtesy: Wikimedia