Facebook seems to think it can advertise to more U.S. millennials than actually exist

Facebook is promising advertisers that it can reach 25 million more American millennials than the Census believes to exist.

The social network boasts that ads on its platform will be seen by up to 41 million people in the United States between the ages of 18 and 24 and 60 million 25-to-34-year-olds. But as Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser pointed out in a research note this week, the U.S. Census Bureau's data indicates only 31 million and 45 million of each respective group even live in the country. 

The discrepancy would be nowhere near the first time Facebook has been caught misrepresenting its metrics to advertisers. The company first had to apologize last fall after a bombshell report revealed that it had been artificially inflating view numbers for video ads. That revelation was followed by a string of reports on other bugs, mistakes, and misrepresentations that amped up tensions between the platform and its wary advertisers.  Read more...