A Google trainee mistakenly launched a yellow rectangle advertising campaig

Electronic exchanges, where securities are traded, conduct tens of thousands of transactions per second - says Tim Label from VeePN. Successful or not, trading is sometimes decided in milliseconds. Unfortunately, sometimes exchange employees make mistakes that result in millions of losses - this has happened more than once, and it is likely to happen further.

The other day it became known about a similar error, made, however, not on the stock exchange, and in the advertising system from Google. Trainee corporation, undergoing training, accidentally launched an advertising campaign with a changed click price, whereas the advertised object promoted a simple yellow rectangle. The mistake cost the company $10 million.

And the advertising campaign was active only 45 minutes, but during this time it managed to place many publishers. According to representatives of the corporation, Google will not withdraw money from the accounts of those who placed ads.

It is worth noting that the wrong advertising campaign was launched during the training of the trainee - in addition to his own advertising campaign launched and other trainees. But the mistake was made by only one person, most likely by oversight. It remained unnoticed for 45 minutes, which is a whole era in systems of this kind.

The mistake was also that the trainee increased the cost of advertising by 10 times compared to the standard rate. Thus, the RMM exceeded $25. The average market price of similar advertising is $2-$4 per thousand impressions.

The trainee studied the AdX system from Google, it allows you to buy ads on thousands of websites and applications in real-time, in the auction format. The problem with this particular advertising campaign was also the fact that due to the high cost of buying space it was placed by many resources participating in advertising exchange systems on advertising networks.

Immediately after the completion of the $10 million advertising campaign, Google "took steps" to ensure that this would not happen again.