Two companies who say Google misled them over the meaning of the word “daily” in their AdWords contract are a bit richer this morning, MediaPost reports. While Google declined to admit any error, the company did settle the class action lawsuit, agreeing to pay out as much as $20 million to affected AdWords marketers.
In the settlement, Google agreed to pay both Minnesota printing company CLRB Hanson Industries and New Jersey resident Howard Stern (no relation to the radio personality) $20,000, while their lawyers will get $5 million. The rest of the $20 million will go to other affected search marketers in the form of AdWords ad credits. MediaPost says a Google spokesman commented on the settlement this way:
“Google believes the claims are without merit, but we are pleased to have the litigation behind us and to move forward with our business objectives.”
That “without merit” part is interesting. In the suit, the plaintiffs argued that Google violated their AdWords agreement by charging them at times as much as 120% of their daily AdWords budget. In court papers, Google admitted that it did sometimes charge 120% of marketers’ budgets, but that it did so only to make up for days when it under-delivered ads.
The suit, thus, centered on what exactly the word “daily” means in an AdWords contract. And since anyone with a dictionary could probably determine that–and not in Google’s favor–it seems likely the suit had some merit.
In the end, it looks like Google figured $20 million was a small price to pay to avoid going any further down that semantic road. Smart move.
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