Meta just suffered a major Facebook ad glitch that has advertisers asking about refunds
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., speaks during the virtual Meta Connect event in New York, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Over the weekend, Alex Gorlick experienced what he called the worst Facebook glitch he’s seen in the decade he’s worked in digital advertising.
Gorlick, the CEO of marketing agency Intensify, checked in on one of his client’s accounts on Sunday, and noticed that it had spent 90% of its daily Facebook ad budget by 9 a.m. That meant it had only 10% left for the remaining 15 hours of the day.
He then found that the problem was widespread, spanning his entire customer base. Gorlick said that all those advertisers had essentially just wasted most of their money for the day, spending roughly triple the amount they normally would to acquire a customer.
“The results were horrendous,” Gorlick told CNBC. “It’s the biggest malfunction I’ve ever seen on Facebook ads.”
For brands that are already lowering ad costs to manage through a sluggish economy and a mobile ad market that no longer allows for targeting based on user data, Facebook’s miscue is more than just an unfortunate blip. In low-margin industries, where every dollar counts, it can turn a profitable weekend into a big loser, while also raising further questions about the reliability of Facebook’s ad systems.
A spokesperson for Facebook parent Meta acknowledged there was an ad glitch but declined to provide details or an explanation as to why it happened.
“A technical issue that has now been resolved caused ad delivery issues for some advertisers,” the spokesperson said.
How Facebook ad auctions work
In a typical Facebook online ad auction, a company can allocate a certain amount of money to run ads on the social media service over the course of a day to maximize how many eyeballs see the promotion. It appears that on Sunday the Facebook ad system bundled many more ads than normal into the morning hours, resulting in a highly inefficient day.
Data analytics and marketing firm Varos provided data showing that, of the more than 3,000 ecommerce and direct-to-consumer companies that use its technology, the software bug caused a majority of them to experience a rise in cost per thousand impressions, or what those in the industry call CPMs.
About 36% of companies were “very significantly impacted” by the bug, meaning their CPMs at least doubled, Varos said. Varos CEO Yarden Shaked said another third of companies experienced “significant increases but not like bonkers.”
Shaked said the glitch resulted in a “bidding war for nothing.” He compared it to Costco selling a random toaster that suddenly garnered so much demand that the price spiked way beyond market value.
“Everyone came in in the middle of the night for some reason and started a bidding war over that old toaster,” Shaked said. “You know, it’s completely ridiculous.”
Data about the glitch provided by the advertising technology firm Proxima on 108 companies also revealed that these firms spent their “entire day’s budget in the first few hours of the day,” the company said.
Companies that implemented cost caps, or limits on their advertising campaigns, were not impacted by the glitch, Proxima noted. When companies turned off their ad campaigns because of the bug, some bigger brands took advantage and were able to run successful Facebook ad campaigns throughout the day because of a lack of competition.
Additionally, the Facebook ad bug impacted companies running ads tied to Earth Day.
“The fact that it was Earth Day on Saturday, April 22nd meant that brands running sales for Earth Day were the most impacted like organic, eco-friendly brands focused on Earth Day as a key selling period,” the company said.
Barry Hott, a performance marketing consultant, said that at the time of the bug, the situation for companies running Facebook ads seemed “pretty massive, very painful.”
In retrospect, however, Hott believes the overall impact of the ad error might be “pretty small,” considering in the grand scheme of things, companies occasionally deal with big Meta ad errors that impact their campaigns.
Hott noted that Facebook experienced a major ad glitch a day before Black Friday in 2020 as well as another similar bug earlier that summer.
Refunds?
The main issue for advertisers will be whether they get refunds from Meta because of the glitch, industry experts said.
The Meta spokesperson said the company is “conducting a detailed analysis that assesses opportunities for refunds.”
“We have more information on the refunds process here,” the spokesperson added in a statement.
Because of the glitch, “a bunch of advertisers and business owners had a really s—y day,” Hott said, adding that they will have a “crappy week” as they wonder if they will get refunds and if they do, will it be the full amount they believe they should be owed or chump change.
He recommends that if advertisers have access to a Meta customer support representative — a part of Meta that has been hit by layoffs — they need to ask frequently about refunds, or risk being ignored. Because retailers often make business decisions like how many products they should order or sell based on their online advertisements, the software glitch could also impact other areas in a company’s business than just merely an increase to their CPMs.
“Basically, no one at the company is going to care about this problem if nobody’s saying anything about it, so they kind of count on advertisers to forget about this in a week or two weeks,” Hott said. “I tell everyone— I’ve had to do this myself — when these issues happen, you know, make a big stink about it.”
Watch: Elon Musk inspired Zuckerberg to reduce Meta’s headcount
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta’s AI assistant now has 1 billion monthly active users across the company’s family of apps, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
The “focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI with an emphasis on personalization, voice conversations and entertainment,” Zuckerberg said.
The artificial intelligent assistant’s 1 billion milestone comes after the company in April released a standalone app for the tool.
The plan is for Meta to keep growing the product before building a business around it, Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. As Meta AI improves overtime, Zuckerberg said “there will be opportunities to either insert paid recommendations” or offer “a subscription service so that people can pay to use more compute.”
In February, CNBC reported that Meta was planning to debut a standalone Meta AI app during the second quarter and test a paid-subscription service akin to rival chat apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“It may seem kind of funny that a billion monthly actives doesn’t seem like it’s at scale for us, but that’s where we’re at,” Zuckerberg told shareholders.
During the Meta shareholder meeting, investors voted on 14 different items related to the company’s business, nine of which were shareholder proposals covering topics such as child safety, greenhouse gas emissions and a proposed bitcoin treasury assessment.
Shareholder proposal 8, for example, was submitted by JLens, which is an investment advisor and affiliate of the Anti-Defamation League, and called for Meta to prepare an annual report detailing and addressing hate content, including antisemitism, on its services following January policy changes that relaxed content-moderation guidelines.
Early voting results on Wednesday showed the proposals that Meta’s board did not recommend were unlikely to pass, including one calling for the company to end its dual-class share structure, which gives Zuckerberg significant voting power. Meanwhile, the voting items that the board favored, including those pertaining to approving the company’s board of director nominees and an equity incentive plan, were likely to pass, based on the preliminary results.
Meta said final polling results will be released within four business days on the company’s website and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff participates in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2025.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Salesforce shares were volatile in extended trading on Wednesday after the sales and customer service software maker reported upbeat fiscal first-quarter results and guidance.
Here’s how the company performed relative to LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: $2.58 adjusted vs. 2.54 expected
- Revenue: $9.83 billion vs. $9.75 billion expected
Salesforce’s revenue grew 7.6% year over year in the quarter, which ended on April 30, according to a statement. Net income of $1.54 billion, or $1.59 per share, was basically flat compared with $1.53 billion, or $1.56 per share, a year ago.
President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. in early April. Co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff sounded positive about the company’s results for the quarter anyway, pointing to its plan, announced on Tuesday, to buy data management company Informatica for $8 billion.
It would be Salesforce’s priciest acquisition since the $27.1 billion Slack deal in 2021. Slack marked the top end of the buyouts Salesforce had made under Benioff. Activist investors raised concerns about all the spending, in addition to slowing revenue growth.
Salesforce sprung into action, slashing 10% of its headcount. Benioff proclaimed that the board’s mergers and acquisitions committee had been disbanded. The company’s finance chief at the time said it would reach a margin expansion goal two years early. And Salesforce started paying dividends to shareholders.
Initial reception to the Informatica announcement was generally favorable. “Salesforce is paying a reasonable multiple for the asset, in our view, and the deal should be more easily digested by investors than some of the company’s large deals in the past (i.e. Slack),” Stifel analysts led by J. Parker Lane wrote in a note to clients. The investment bank has a buy rating on Salesforce shares.
During the fiscal first quarter, Salesforce introduced the AgentExchange marketplace for artificial intelligence agents.
Management sees $2.76 to $2.78 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.11 billion to $10.16 billion in revenue for the fiscal second quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $2.73 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.01 billion in revenue.
Salesforce bumped up its full-year forecast. It called for $11.27 to $11.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $41.0 billion to $41.3 billion in revenue, implying revenue growth between 8% and 9%. The LSEG consensus included net income of $11.16 per share and $40.82 billion in revenue. The guidance in February was $11.09 to $11.17 in adjusted earnings per share, with $40.5 billion to $40.9 billion in revenue.
As of Wednesday’s close, the stock had slipped about 18% so far in 2025, while the S&P index was unchanged.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
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