Facebook Flub: Advertiser Accidentally Charged $8.8 Million

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When Facebook advertiser Joshua Niamehr logged in to his ad campaign’s account, he knew he had an outstanding balance. He didn’t think, however, that he’d racked up a bill of $8.8 million.

Niamehr’s account, however, showed this statement:

There is an outstanding balance of $8,804,978.14 USD on your account. Your ads will not be displayed until your account is settled. Please enter a valid funding source. When you submit that information, we will charge your funding source for $8,804,978.14 USD.

Advertising on Facebook is pretty cheap, especially considering how much exposure an advertiser can get. But $8.8 million? Not exactly cheap, especially when your outstanding account balance was actually supposed to be $58.07, as Niamehr’s was.

Facebook soon corrected the $8 billion glitch, but the question remains: why such a specifically incorrect number? TechCrunch reports that Niamehr thinks the number reflects Facebook’s total outstanding debt from advertisers, but there’s no way to know for sure. For now, we bet he’s just happy to have kept the debt collectors at bay.

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