That one Tuesday in 2019 when our Facebook ad budget accidentally ran 10x

I set up a $50 daily cap but forgot to hit save on the campaign manager, and we burned through $3500 by lunchtime before anyone noticed. Client was surprisingly chill about it but I still double check every budget three times before launching now - anyone else had a close call like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

dakota_murphy907d agoTop Commenter

oh man i had a buddy who did something real similar back in 2018... he was running a little campaign for a local bakery and thought he set the budget to like $30 a day but nope it was $300. he didnt notice until he got a call from his bank asking about a $2000 charge from facebook at like 10am. the bakery owner was actually super cool about it because they got a ton of orders that week but my friend still talks about it like it was a war story. i always double check my budgets now too, its like a reflex at this point.

cameron_chen7d ago

Did you ever catch yourself doing the math on what that $2,000 got them though? I did something similar back in 2019 with my own little side gig, thought I was running a $50 test for a weekend and woke up to a $400 bill. Spent the rest of Sunday panic-checking the analytics, but hey, I learned to triple-check every zero before I hit submit.