TurboTax admits no wrongdoing in its site set-up or advertising, but will revise its advertising as well as refund 4.4 million filers
There are two certainties in life: death and taxes. TurboTax took that inevitability for a ride. In many of its ads it promoted free filings. But once users visited the site, TurboTax made it nearly impossible to find the free filing portal that was a part of the Free File program, run by the federal government in partnership with tax software and businesses to allow people under an income threshold ($73,000) to file for free. Exasperated users often ended up using TurboTax’s paid offering when they should have been able to file for free. TurboTax admits no wrongdoing in its site set-up or advertising, but will revise its advertising as well as refund 4.4 million filers who were eligible for free filing between 2016 to 2018. Filers will automatically receive a check for $30 for each year they paid but were actually eligible for free filing.
Advertising is Lucrative — IAB Stats
You probably don’t know what IAB stands for, or what they do. They’re the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and they set standards and do research in the digital advertising space, among other exciting stuff. Anyway, they recently released their report on 2021’s advertising expenditures, and whoa, there’s a lot of money flowing through the industry, and it’s growing at an incredible rate.
Digital video is the fastest growing channel, with spending up 50 percent since 2020, and total revenues of close to $40 billion.
If you’re looking at pure growth, digital audio had the greatest year-over-year growth. It’s up 57.9 percent with revenue close to $5 billion.
Create a free account to keep reading.
