Microsoft adCenter CPC Costs Spike: Known Bug

Fixed: The adCenter representative has notified us via the two forums and the adCenter blog that the overcharging has been fixed and that they are now working up a plan to reimburse advertisers.

Update: This is a very serious issue. Continue reading below...

Reported this morning at WebmasterWorld, was a bug where advertisers reports are showing that they are being seriously overcharged for many of their keywords.

I have a bid. of $0.30 and i was charged on a click for $16.

So this user was overcharged by about 500%.

They charged me $5.10/click on something that is clearly set at $0.44/click!

My daily spend increased almost 10-fold from $140 to over $1350 yesterday!

The official adCenter representative, adCenterEU, confirmed this issue saying:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

This is a known issue and our support team are working on analysing the root cause and providing a solution.

We'll post back when we have more news.

Thanks for your patience.

Regards

adCenterEU

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Not only is there a thread at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums also has a thread with screen captures. Take a look at this:

Notice how the base bid is $0.50 and the average bid is $281.58. Nice Microsoft! Yes, Microsoft is aware of this issue and posted an update in the WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint thread about an hour ago.

The adCenter team are still ascertaining the root cause in order to implement a resolution.

We completely understand your frustration with this issue and are pulling out all the stops to bring it to a swift conclusion.

Once we have fixed the issue we will decide on which and how customers are credited for any overspend due to the error and we hope you'll bear with us while we investigate.

We'll post back in the next 3 hours with further updates.

Thanks again for your patience on this matter.

This is big!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.