Over the weekend, Meta experienced an ad glitch that caused advertisers to pay as much as twice their usual ad rates, according to CNBC. Advertisers reported paying thousands for ads that they claim no one was able to view. 

The glitch affected advertisers on Facebook as well as Instagram and caused advertisers to have to fork out more of ads, in some cases, more than they had budgeted for specific campaigns. 

In fact, complete advertising budgets were wiped out in a matter of hours, according to Retail News Asia while ads did not receive any more clicks than usual.

While a spokesperson from Meta has since reportedly confirmed that there was a technical issue, it denied that advertisers were charged exorbitant rates for ads that consumers did not see. 

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Rather, it explained that the issue resulted in “some miscalibration” for advertising campaigns that were focused on optimising for certain sales objectives. This resulted in faster campaign spending and more variable costs. 

Meta noted that it does not have evidence that it charged customers for “ads no one saw”. It added that if no impressions occurred, the advertiser would not be charged.

Typically, Meta’s ad systems work such that business can lay out a campaign budget for a certain time person and Meta will then control how much money is spent and when it is spent. Besides having access to metrics showing how well the ad did, advertisers are unable to see anything beyond that. Meta usually allows the platform to spend 25% over the daily amount budgeted by each business and claims that it does not have evidence of the glitch causing ad spend to exceed this.  

Meta has promised to carry out its “normal refund policies” though it did not provide a timeline for when this will be. 

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to Meta for more information. 

The news comes shortly after Meta announced that business in the Asia Pacific (APAC) will soon be unable to host a shop on their Facebook and Instagram pages or use product tagging in their posts from 10 August this year unless it has a shop checkout enabled in the US. This comes as Meta doubles down on ensuring its ads tools are as performant as possible through AI-powered automation in order to ensure that the right ads are delivered to the right people at the right time. 

In a statement, Meta reveled that this means that it will be focusing attention and resources on products such as Advantage+ shopping campaigns, messaging, and Reels, which drive the highest performance and ROI, and give shoppers the most personalised experience.

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