Due to a Meta outage, marketers lost “thousands” of dollars. How to apply for compensation?

Full compensation for affected marketers is not guaranteed, but certain measures can be taken to increase their chances of receiving compensation.

Meta has apologized to marketers for the advertising campaign outage that resulted in campaigns overspending by “thousands.” The tech giant confirmed the restoration of services and expressed sympathy for any inconvenience caused to advertisers.

Currently, affected parties are awaiting compensation, which is expected to take between four and eight weeks.

Why is this important?

If you’ve been affected by the outage, it’s necessary to apply for compensation, but it’s important to note that payment refunds are not guaranteed. To enhance the likelihood of receiving a full refund, you can take specific steps.

Refund Request

Barry Hott, a consultant specializing in marketing growth and efficiency, urged advertisers to report the issue to their Meta representatives and/or support service to “increase the likelihood of a refund for you and for everyone.”

Hott then shared a step-by-step guide to show marketers how to file a complaint. He recommended reporting to Meta’s support service and sending the following message in English:

“My campaigns overspent their budgets and seemed to ignore their cost caps yesterday due to a confirmed widespread Meta ad delivery outage, causing campaigns to spend more than expected and did so extremely inefficiently, causing me to lose money.”

This should lead you to the menu shown in the screenshot below. Here, you will need to select “Request Advertising Costs Refund.”

Then you need to select your advertising account and choose “Other issues with advertising account,” as shown in the screenshot below:

After this, you’ll be able to send another message – for this step, Hott recommended simply inserting the same advertisement as before, along with the Meta status page screenshot provided below:

Next, begin uploading screenshots showing performance issues. Include all account identifiers if you have multiple accounts. Respond politely to support inquiries, considering their potential unfamiliarity with Meta ads and the outage.

Comments from other marketers

One marketer wrote on X: “I woke up to ~$80 in credit from $6,000 lost. But my issue still hasn’t been resolved, and they sent me an email at 5 in the morning asking for patience while they sort this out.”

Woke up to a ~$80 credit from $6k down the drain. But my ticket is still unresolved and they emailed me at 5 am asking me to be patient as they are working it out. pic.twitter.com/igONaPYbW5

— Jester (@ICoperpote) February 15, 2024

It blew thousands in minutes!

— Raivis RS (@raivis_rs) February 15, 2024