After Facebook Ads Manager suffered a major outage on Monday, October 29, Digiday surveyed a number of ad buyers who voiced their frustrations with the platform.

The users surveyed almost unanimously bemoaned the platform’s “inconsistency,” and the outage on Monday, which began around 12:00PM E.D.T was a stark reminder of the problems plaguing ads manager. As the 2nd biggest self-serve ads buying platform (after Google), the ad buyers that Digiday polled called Facebook Ads Manager the “most frustrating” platform, “by far.”

We’ve had our own issues with the seemingly arbitrary method of approving or denying which ads are accepted. Once, we boosted a post from one of our clients about the efficacy of medical marijuana edibles for people who suffer from fibromyalgia. It was up and running smoothly for a couple of days when the app suggested we optimize our audience targeting. When we accepted the suggested and republished the ad, it was rejected for violating Facebook’s policy against promoting drug use.

https://twitter.com/BYoungMedia/status/1056983120711376896

Highlights:

  • Inconsistency is the most frustrating aspect of Facebook Ads Manager. Says one buyer, “The site goes down, auctions are inconsistent and hitting ‘publish’ can be a crapshoot. Surprisingly wonky for such a powerhouse.”
  • When Facebook goes down, it affects the ability to conduct The beauty of digital marketing is the ability to get instant feedback and respond on the fly. When you are limited from the feedback, you lose the advantage.”
  • Facebook’s director of product responded to complaints on Twitter.

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John