Twitter overcharged video advertisers due to error in its Android app

Well, Twitter has one-upped Facebook.

For more than a month, Twitter incorrectly measured brands’ video ads running on Android devices and overcharged advertisers as a result, the company said on Thursday in an emailed statement:

We recently discovered a technical error due to a Twitter product update to Android clients that affected some video ad campaigns from November 7 to December 12. Once we discovered the issue, we resolved it and communicated with affected partners. The impact was limited given this happened only on Android clients over the course of a month. This was a technical error, not a policy or definition issue, so we are confident it has been resolved.

Twitter has refunded the affected advertisers, according to a person familiar with the matter, confirming a Business Insider report that broke the news earlier on Thursday. In some cases, the refunded amount was as little as $1, the person said, though that may say as much about Twitter’s video ad prices as about the scope of the error. The glitch inflated Twitter’s video ad measurements by as much as 35 percent, according to Business Insider. The Twitter spokesperson declined to comment.

Twitter’s ad measurement error follows a string of math mess-ups by Facebook that have caused marketers to question how much they can trust the social network’s metrics. But as bad as Facebook’s mistakes have been, none of them affected how much money advertisers were charged for their campaigns. Twitter’s did.

Unintentional as Twitter’s error appears to be, it will likely be held up by advertisers as another example of why digital platforms like Facebook and Twitter need to open themselves up to third-party measurement audits. Advertisers’ demands for such audits were already expected to heighten next year following Facebook’s flubs, as DigitasLBi exec Jeanne Bright discussed in last week’s episode of the Marketing Land Live podcast.

About The Author

Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson, Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat’s ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar’s attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon’s ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube’s programming strategy, Facebook’s ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking’s rise; and documented digital video’s biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed’s branded video production process and Snapchat Discover’s ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands’ early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo’s and Google’s search designs and examine the NFL’s YouTube and Facebook video strategies.