Google Emails Advertisers On Ad Bug & Asked Advertisers To Delete Your Ad Data

As you know, Google Ads served other advertiser's Merchant Center shopping ads on other advertiser accounts. Google promised to issue credits after hiding the data in reports because of privacy issues. Now, Google emailed advertisers who were impacted about the issue, letting them know they asked the advertisers who have their data to delete that data.

Yehoshua Coren posted a screenshot on X of an email he received that confirmed which accounts were impacted. The email read, "We recently identified that due to a system issue, some of the products in your Google Merchant Center account(s) were showing with another advertiser's ads starting on July 30, 16:54:38 PDT." It added, "As a result, your Product attributes data (such as Merchant Center ID, Brand, Category and Product title) were also temporarily available as reporting dimensions in that Google Ads account in the Report Editor, Ads Editor and the Google Ads API. The affected accounts):"

Then the email says which steps Google took to address the issues and one was to ask advertisers to delete data that is not theirs. Google wrote:

• Fixed the issue that had affected these products on July 31, 11:27:35 PDT
• Removed the incorrect data from the affected reports
• Instructed the advertiser that had the incorrect data in their account to delete any copies of the data that they may have made

Yea, I am sure those advertisers all deleted all of that data.

Here is a screenshot of that email:

Other advertisers have been posting these screenshots as well on social.

#ppcchat I just received this e-mail from the GMC team regarding the Shopping issues.

That last part made me chuckle :D

How will they check that? 😅😂 pic.twitter.com/DjyCGtBtl3

— Alfred Simon (@AlfredSimon) August 19, 2024

A flood of emails about the recent MC ID cross-pollination bug is starting.

Note there are 2 main flavors: if another advertiser served *your* products, or if *you* served another advertiser's products. In one case the mail is sent by the MC team, in the other by the Ads team. https://t.co/1Be8mQwqEu pic.twitter.com/UpZe7KJXSa

— Mike Ryan (@mikeryanretail) August 19, 2024

Anu at Search Engine Land has a good reaction recap on this news.

Forum discussion at X.