Meta’s AI-powered ad platform Advantage Plus has been significantly overspending customer budgets, leading advertiserss nursing financial losses and causing them to spend their marketing budgets elsewhere.

The system, designed to automate ad setup and budget spending, has been funneling money to Meta at an unexpected rate, with daily budgets being exhausted within hours and costs inflating up to 10 times the normal amount.

Since it began in February 2024, the problem primarily affected small businesses, which saw their ad dollars wiped out quickly, resulting in little or no revenue, and significant losses in some cases.

Meta acknowledged the ad system had technical issues and said it worked as expected for the majority of advertisers. 

However, its customers took to Reddit and other online communities in droves to complain about the product and they difficulty they experienced in obtaining refunds or resolving the problem what they saw as Meta's near non-existent customer support.

The incident underscores the risks associated with relying on more or less fully automated AI systems for important business functions such as advertising.