Facebook's Ads Manager Went Completely Dark for Some Marketers Over the Weekend

Facebook advertisers last week thought they'd cruise right into the weekend without as much as a bumpy road to contend with. But then many of them apparently couldn't see the road because of the lights going out on Facebook's ads manager, a set of tools that lets marketers target, budget, measure and otherwise control their campaigns.

Viral video gurus Harmon Brothers were running a Facebook video effort that exceeded $100,000 for its FiberFix client, pushing a clip that had garnered 16 million views and more than 300,000 shares. Then, the ads manager went down, and it stayed down from Friday afternoon through Monday morning.

"You couldn't hit the brakes or accelerator," said Jeffrey Harmon, co-founder of the digitally focused creative shop. "By the time they turned it back on on Monday, our video disappeared."

In the aftermath, Harmon said, his team was still waiting to learn more from Facebook in terms of whether the viral post can be retrieved.

Facebook didn't immediately respond to questions about how widespread the situation was.

A quick search of Twitter, however, showed other marketers were affected.