Plaintiffs Dismiss Video Ad Fraud Suit vs. Google Without Prejudice

Plaintiffs Dashawn Williams and Devon Holmes voluntarily dismissed without prejudice their July fraud complaint against Google, said a Thursday notice (docket 3:23-cv-03685) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose. The plaintiffs alleged Google charges advertisers a premium price for its TrueView video ads, and that the company receives inflated payments due to artificial views (see 2307260056). They alleged Google promises TrueView 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. Instead, they alleged, many TrueView ads are “displayed as muted, auto-playing videos either ‘out-stream’ or obscured on independent sites.”