Google Ads Training Mistake Cost $1.6m in One Hour

A Google Ads training mistake cost Google about US $1.6 million dollars in one hour, as a single yellow ad was shown across the United States and Australia. Apparently the ad was a “training mistake made by a Google team that helps customers learn how to use the platform” according to reports.

Ad Exchanger reports that from 7:00pm to 7:45pm on Tuesday, December 4, 2018, sites running Google Ads on their websites saw a weird yellow ads with a size of 300 x 250. Apparently the advertising came from an Australian fashion company called “The Iconic”, who ultimately wasn’t responsible for the error. Ad Exchanger confirmed that the ad campaign spent at least $1.6 million US dollars in less than an hour, but the total spend could have exceeded $10 million US dollars. Furthermore, some individual publishers saw more than $100k in ad spend in a 45 minute time span.

Some individual publishers saw more than $100k in ad spend in a 45 minute time span.

That means that some publishers and ad exchanges made over $100,000 in 45 minutes because of this Google Ads training mistake. Personally, I think that’s crazy. While Google does pay a refund at the end of the month for invalid traffic to those running Google Ads, apparently this advertiser from Australia won’t be responsible for the error. And, apparently Google is going to pay the publishers and sites that ran the ad the money that they’re owed.

Google’s official statement, emailed to Adage, stated “An advertiser training exercise led to an error where actual spend happened on publisher sites for approximately 45 minutes. As soon as we were made aware of this honest mistake we worked quickly to stop the campaigns running. We will honor payments to publishers for any ads purchased and are working hard to put safeguards in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

Yellow ad image credit: adexchanger.com