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Google is apologizing to advertisers after Google Ads stopped serving ads for some accounts over the weekend, beginning on March 1. Other advertisers were met with error messages, high latency, and other unexpected issues, leading to displaced ad spend and lower conversions.
Some advertisers estimate the impact to be in the tens of thousands in terms of lost revenues.
In an update published Monday to the Google Ads Status Dashboard, the company said the issues have been resolved. But Google does not appear to have an explanation for the blackout—the company said it is “investigating” various reports and will provide an update when it has more information.
It said, “We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.”
A Google spokesperson told ADWEEK that only a “small number of accounts” had their ads not served. These advertisers did not incur any charges, since the ads were not served.
However, some media buyers who spoke with ADWEEK estimate that displaced ad revenues from the incident amount to multiple thousands of dollars.
Alex van de Pol, a freelance media buyer, saw one client’s account stop serving ads on March 1. In his approximation, the blackout for this client translated to about €50,000, or around $52,600 in missed ad revenues.
“Given the amount of revenue lost during the client’s peak season, this was major,” van de Pol said.
Meanwhile, ADSQUIRE, a digital ad agency that caters to law firms, witnessed impression declines ranging from 13% to 95% across 30% of its managed accounts.
On one of the agency’s larger accounts, whose impressions dipped 80%, the displaced investment equated to $29,300 from March 1 to 3. Metrics have not yet returned to normal rates on the affected accounts, according to the company’s CEO and founder, Anthony Higman.
ADSQUIRE has experienced a number of other issues with Google Ads recently. In one instance, it saw a single advertiser monopolizing all three ad slots on a page. Some reports have also displayed inexplicable metrics, Higman said.
“In the last few weeks, we have seen wild inaccuracies and results across the board and have more client complaints than we have ever had before—and we have been an agency for four years now,” said Higman.
In another case, ads for two brands that work with paid search agency Ten Thousand Foot View went down during the outage this weekend. Total media investment would have amounted to around $2,000, according to the agency’s managing director Edward Goss.
“Clients weren’t happy about the issue or the lack of response from Google,” he told ADWEEK. “Even now I haven’t seen any clear explanation to what the issue was or how many accounts were affected.”
To make up for the outage, impacted clients will be forced to overspend in the coming days, Goss said. “That typically results in lower conversion performance, a kind of double whammy for advertisers.”