Remember that day earlier this month when facebook just wasn’t working. This widely upset advertisers and now they are demanding refunds from the social media giant.
Some people were unable to use Facebook for at least 12 hours. “I was just locked out, seeing the credit card spending all this money,” David Herrmann, co-owner of social media agency Social Outlier, told Ad Age. His company handles about $400,000 in daily ad spending on Facebook.
“The shutdown created chaos in the auction,” he says, adding that some advertisers were paying $270 for ads that typically cost $30.
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“Even without a full accounting, the damage is clearly widespread. More than 6 million advertisers on Facebook are mostly concerned with performance, which is dependent on the stability of the platform, and the outage was another reminder that it can’t always be trusted,” Ad Age reported.
According to a Facebook spokesman, the company would not comment on providing refunds.
Jason Portnoy, owner of Jport Media, said his ad clients suffered. “You’re watching something you know should not be running and there’s no way to stop it,” Portnoy said. “You would have turned off spending hours ago, and instead you’re just watching more money go.”
And even though Portnoy says he’d like to ask Facebook for a refund, he doesn’t hold out hope on getting one. According to Portnoy in the end he will still have to do business with Facebook because it still is the most important sales channel for performance marketers.
“Despite what happened, I still think Facebook is one of the best advertising platforms in the world,” Portnoy says. “It’s just unfortunate this happened and put advertisers in a bad situation.”
