Google Ads Outage Causing Billing Confusion

Google confirmed there was an “account outage issue” that resulted in some ads to stop serving for a period of time in the afternoon of September 22nd. This caused a bunch of advertisers to be confused when they reviewed their stats and billing reports.

Yesterday, Kirk Williams asked on Twitter “Did anyone else see an odd billing glitch yesterday evening in Google Ads? Only saw a few others talk about it, only some accounts impacted. Ads dropped and then came back with a vengeance after what I imagine was a fix implemented.” Many replied that they did see this.

Ginny Marvin from Google shortly after confirmed there was an issue on Twitter, she said “There was an account outage issue in the afternoon (PST) of 22nd September, which caused some ads to stop serving temporarily. The issue has been resolved and no action is required.”

Hi Kirk, There was an account outage issue in the afternoon (PST) of 22nd September, which caused some ads to stop serving temporarily. The issue has been resolved and no action is required.

— Ginny Marvin (@GinnyMarvin) September 23, 2021

Here are some of the complaints about the issue:

I had 6 accounts (not linked) all get billing alerts almost the same time yesterday. They all still have the warning banner at the top of the UI today, but no problems in Transactions section and ads are running. #ppcchat

— Rev. Matt Poldberg (@NotSpamIpromise) September 23, 2021

Yes. Ads were paused due to “billing issue”, but account had not even reached threshold yet and there were no billing alerts in account. Around 4-6PST.

— Leslie Drechsler (@ppcbuyers) September 23, 2021

Hit about 40% of our accounts. Was resolved about 10am EST this AM

— Tony Chopp (@tonychopp) September 23, 2021

Yes, down from 3-6pm pt

— Andy (@andrewghayes) September 23, 2021

You can see more complaints on this on Twitter.

So you are not alone if you saw this issue.

Forum discussion at Twitter.