LinkedIn faces US lawsuit for allegedly overcharging advertisers

A U.S. judge said Microsoft Corp’s LinkedIn must face a lawsuit claiming it inflated the number of people who watched video ads on the networking platform, allowing it to overcharge hundreds of thousands of advertisers.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen, however, on Tuesday dismissed fraud-based claims and an unfair competition claim, saying the plaintiff advertisers did not show that LinkedIn made specific misrepresentations or that its conduct hurt the public at large.

But the San Jose, California-based judge let the advertisers pursue claims based on the theory that bot traffic, errant clicks and fraudulent clicks inflated the metrics they relied on when buying LinkedIn ads.