Google will issue advertisers credit refunds after overcharging error

The glitch impacted campaigns that ran within Display and Video 360 from July through to December last year.

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Google will be providing credit refunds to advertisers who were overcharged due to a technical glitch.

The error affected a small number of campaigns within Display and Video 360 that ran from July through to December last year.

Why we care. If your campaigns were affected by the technical glitch, make sure to contact Google to get the credit refund process started.

Email notifications. Google sent emails to affected advertisers, notifying them of overcharges caused by the technical glitch, reports Ad Age. While the search engine assures that the issue has now been resolved, the tech giant plans to compensate advertisers for the overcharges by issuing credits.

Next steps. Google advised affected advertisers to contact their sales teams for more information.

What Google is saying. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land:

  • “We detected a bug that resulted in a limited number of partners being overcharged for a small number of impressions on Display & Video 360.”
  • “These overcharges were minor. We resolved this issue in December 2023, and yesterday, notified impacted advertisers that we have issued them credits for the overcharged amount.”

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Meta overspending glitch. Meta also issued an apology to advertisers this week after an Ads Delivery outage that resulted in campaigns overspending by “thousands”. Refunds are expected to take four to six weeks to process.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Nicola Agius
Contributor
Nicola Agius was Paid Media Editor of Search Engine Land from 2023-2024. She covered paid media, retail media and more. Prior to this, she was SEO Director at Jungle Creations (2020-2023), overseeing the company's editorial strategy for multiple websites. She has over 15 years of experience in journalism and has previously worked at OK! Magazine (2010-2014), Mail Online (2014-2015), Mirror (2015-2017), Digital Spy (2017-2018) and The Sun (2018-2020). She also previously teamed up with SEO agency Blue Array to co-author Amazon bestselling book Mastering In-House SEO.

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