Meta ads were down for some time on April 30

Meta’s advertising system faced a glitch on Sunday, April 30. It overcharged advertisers, who were overcharging customers, thereby forcing the former to spend as much as twice the usual ad rates, according to reports. 

This is the first major advertising system glitch for the technology giant in over a decade.

Some advertisers speculated that they were charged for ads that no one saw. It has also been reported that for a brief period on April 30, Meta removed all ads from its network. 

The company confirmed the bug happened and promised to follow its “normal refund process” but it didn’t elaborate on what exactly went wrong.

The ad glitch impacted Facebook as well as a few Instagram advertisers. A spokesperson from the platform informed that the tech issue that caused ad delivery issues for some advertisers, has now been resolved.

This issue happened when the company introduced some changes in its ad system. Meta has merged its advertising product, business messaging and commerce departments into one division. The company has also introduced some changes in its location policy.

Earlier, Facebook’s default setting for targeting locations was “living in or recently in this location.” This allowed advertisers to reach out to users on the basis of how they were related to the location. 

The menu offered four options: people living in or recently in this location, people living in this location, people recently in this location, and people traveling in this location. 

The menu for location targeting has now been eliminated, leaving only the living in or recently in this location option. Advertisers no longer need to choose a specific type of location targeting.