Meta apologizes after ad error causes campaigns to overspend by ‘thousands’

Meta issued an apology to advertisers following an Ads Delivery outage that resulted in campaigns overspending by “thousands.”

The tech giant confirmed that services are now restored and expressed regret for any inconvenience caused to advertisers.

Refunds, anticipated to take between four and eight weeks, are now awaited by affected parties.

Why we care. If you were affected by the Ads Delivery outage, applying for a refund is necessary, but it’s important to note that payment is not guaranteed. To enhance the likelihood of receiving a full refund, there are specific steps you can take.

Refund application. Barry Hott, Growth and Performance Marketing Consultant, urged advertisers to report the issue to their Meta reps and/or support to “increase the likelihood of a refund for you and for everyone.”

Hott then shared a step-by-step guide to show advertisers how to raise a complaint. He recommended filing a report with Meta support and sending this exact message:

• “My campaigns overspent their budgets and seemed to ignore their cost caps yesterday due to a confirmed widespread Meta ad delivery outage, causing campaigns to spend more than expected and did so extremely inefficiently, causing me to lose money.”

This should then bring you to the menu displayed in the screenshot below. Here, you will need to select “claim refund for ad spend.”

You then need to choose your ad account and select “other ad account issue” as demonstrated in the screenshot below:

You’ll then be able to write another message – for this step, Hott recommended simply pasting the same blurb from earlier along with the below screenshot of the Meta Status Page:

Next, start uploading screenshots showing your performance issues. Include all account IDs if you have multiple accounts. Answer support questions politely, considering their potential unfamiliarity with Meta ads and the outage. Hott concluded:

• “Hopefully you’ll get to a point where they ask for the amount you are requesting for a refund. If you have estimates of what you think was lost, share that amount, but don’t be greedy, use a realistic estimate based on recent past performance.”
• “This is our best chance at getting the refunds we deserve. I hope you found this helpful! Please repost or share this with your peers, and if you don’t already follow me or @MetaBizStatus (the automated account I set up that reports Meta outages), please do!”

Fallout. Several advertisers claimed to have lost thousands as a result of the Meta Ads Delivery outage.

One marketers wrote on X: “Woke up to a ~$80 credit from $6k down the drain. But my ticket is still unresolved and they emailed me at 5 am asking me to be patient as they are working it out.”

Another advertisers commented on X: “It blew thousands in minutes!”

What Meta is saying. Meta did not immediately respond to Search Engine Land’s request for comment.