Twitter Found To Have Overcharged Advertisers, Company Claims It Was ‘Technical Error’

Twitter appeared to have done something shady recently. In the wake of reports disclosing the inconsistencies of Facebook, a new report has surfaced and exposed what the online news and social networking service did to some advertisers.

According to Business Insider, an unnamed source has come out to reveal that Twitter over-billed some video ad buyers in the course of six weeks, from Nov. 7 through Dec. 12. The advertisers were found to have been overcharged during this period.

In a statement released Thursday, a spokesperson for the company addressed the issue by revealing that it was due to a bug found in a product update. The bug was responsible for Twitter’s Android app to inflate the metrics of video ads by as much as 35 percent.

"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," the spokesperson said in a statement. "Once we discovered the issue, we resolved it and communicated the impact to affected partners. Given this was a technical error, not a policy or definition issue, we are confident it has been resolved."

The statement was apparently vague and did not reveal whether the overcharged advertisers received refunds. However, VentureBeat reported that some advertisers may have been refunded with only $1, which means those affected did not come from huge campaigns.

“We will continue to monitor our systems to proactively identify issues. We value our customers’ trust in our service and will continue to provide support and transparency in our partnership,” read the final part of Twitter’s statement.

Unfortunately, it’s already a little too late for Twitter to reassure everyone about how trustworthy it is. TechCrunch said the issue has already planted distrust in the ad platform of the service — the latest blow to the company after a large portion of its top leaders left this year and caused its share price to drop.