Just Days Before the Election, Facebook’s Political Ads System Still Isn’t Fully Fixed

Editor's Note: This article has been updated with statements from Facebook and Joe Biden's campaign. Two days after a bug ravaged Facebook’s political ads system, some advertisers are still seeing their ads deactivated. Political ad buyers and operatives who bought these ads to run in the final week of a contentious election cycle have lost money and, more importantly, time. If Tuesday had gone as planned, Facebook’s blockade against all new political ads would have gone into full effect without a hiccup. Despite criticism that it would hurt get-out-the-vote efforts, Facebook maintained that the deadline would afford its internal team, journalists and academics a week to review all paid political messaging in its system ahead of Election Day in the United States. But Tuesday did not go as planned: New ads were blocked and already-running political ads, bought by Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s presidential campaigns and other political groups, unexpectedly paused for extended amounts of time this week. Democratic political advertising consultant Tim Lim said about 90% of the ads he ran for clients were fixed by Wednesday, the rest were resolved by Thursday. “The biggest point is that with seven days left, we pretty much lost a day of Facebook advertising,” he told Adweek. Facebook ad representatives told buyers early Wednesday that the bug was fixed and the majority of incorrectly paused ads had been restored, but those same buyers told Adweek that problems still persisted. Priorities USA, a liberal political action committee, said the bug affected 586 of its ads. The situation didn't improve until late Thursday afternoon when Facebook informed them it would be turning their ads back on. "While we are one of the largest spenders on digital ads in either party, it should not take a public campaign and endless calls to get Facebook to act," Guy Cecil, the group's chairman, said. "This is much harder for the many smaller organizations that are working to combat misinformation and voter suppression that do not have the connections and resources of a large group like ours." Thursday evening, Joe Biden's campaign told Adweek that thousands of its political ads were still down and, as a result, had incurred losses of more than $500,000. The campaign said the issue has affected its entire digital operation. "Facebook has, to this point, provided no clarity on the widespread issues that are plaguing all of our ad campaigns since the onset of their new ad restrictions," Biden digital director Rob Flaherty said in a statement. "We have no sense of the scale of the problem, who it is affecting, and their plan to resolve it. We find ourselves 5 days out from Election Day unable to trust that our ads will run properly, or if our opponents are being given an unfair, partisan advantage." The Trump campaign confirmed it was affected by the outages but did not provide further details. Facebook is considered one of the most important digital marketing tools and its political advertising operation has become even more crucial to campaigns and advocacy groups this election cycle. Mark Zuckerberg previously said that he expects to sell more than $400 million in political ads this year, but the nonpartisan group Advertising Analytics estimates that nearly $800 million has already been spent on Facebook political ads through last week. Facebook’s importance has grown further this cycle as Twitter and other social platforms have banned political ads altogether. Facebook did not indicate how many advertisers are affected by the bug, the financial impact, if they will reimburse buyers or how they will recompense political groups that depend on Facebook in the last moments of the campaign. A spokesperson told Adweek, however, that they believe they have fixed the bulk of the problems. “Campaigns from both parties have seen some of their ads unexpectedly paused,” Facebook spokesperson Elana Widmann said. “We believe that we have addressed the majority of the problems, and we are working with advertisers to understand and address any outstanding concerns." Facebook also told Adweek the bug was a technical issue, but they were unclear about restrictions on new ads. Representatives told ad buyers they could make targeting changes to the ads after the deadline passed. But when changes were made prior to the deadline, Facebook says its system treated them as new, unapproved ads, blocking them from running. (Facebook published a full statement Thursday evening, explaining their version of events.) Meanwhile, Jake Sticka, vp of client strategy at Rising Tide Interactive, a liberal digital strategy firm, told Adweek Wednesday that a dozen of his firm’s clients were still affected by the outages. New problems were sprouting up too. “In some instances, ads which were [approved before] yesterday have now been deactivated,” Sticka said. “Millions of Americans are voting every day and this issue still not being resolved is unacceptable.” By the time of publication Thursday, Sticka said Facebook had not communicated with Rising Tide in more than a day and, while ads were periodically turned back on, his firm was "still not at 100% resolved." “Facebook has not been responsive to questions we have posed around why our ads continue to be disabled at such a crucial time and have not provided an ETA for resolution,” he said. Tatenda Musapatike, a former Facebook client solutions manager who now works at the Democratic nonprofit Acronym, tweeted Thursday afternoon that “a chunk” of her ads are still not running. One buyer for a liberal agency said the ad outages were worse on Wednesday with more of their ads turning off. By Thursday, about 5% of their ads were still affected. “The political damage is incalculable,” the buyer told Adweek. “To not be able to run critical last week persuasion ads and closing messaging is infuriating.” By Thursday afternoon, when some firms were being told their ads were fixed, the buyer's firm still was experiencing issues and was not getting answers from Facebook. Megan Clasen, paid media advisor for the Biden campaign, tweeted Wednesday afternoon that the campaign was seeing previously approved and running ads deactivate. https://twitter.com/MeganClasen/status/1321486313321881605 Earlier today, Biden digital director Rob Flaherty also tweeted that the issues still were not fixed for them. Sen. Doug Jones' team sent a campaign email Wednesday afternoon, fundraising from the Facebook failure. “A system-wide Facebook glitch has taken down many of our policy-following and previously approved ads with no way to get them running again, and it’s likely more will be affected soon,” Cara Schumann, the campaign’s digital and social production director said in the email. The conservative agency Majority Strategies and the liberal House Majority PAC told Adweek its ad issues were resolved by Thursday morning. The latter said that it also had issues with pacing on Wednesday. “They weren’t serving at the rate they normally would, so fewer people were seeing them,” communications director Caitlin Legacki told Adweek, noting that the problem is now resolved. Ad buyers were not able to put a number on the financial cost of the outage. “At this point in the cycle, it isn't really a financial question—it’s a time question,” Sticka said. “Our clients are losing precious time to communicate on one of the most effective mediums.”