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Google Advertisement Training Exercise Accidentally Costs Company $10 Million

posted by martyb on Saturday December 08 2018, @06:47PM   
from the how-much-for-a-green-ad? dept.

takyon writes:

Google trainee puts up dummy advert by mistake

A Google training exercise that went wrong meant a dummy advert was placed on a "huge number" of webpages and apps, the Financial Times has reported. The mistake meant a blank yellow rectangle was active on the sites and apps for about 45 minutes on 4 December, it said. The ad was only visible to people in the US and Australia.

The mistake happened when trainees were being shown how to use Google's in-house ad placing system.

[...] The advert was placed at a far higher rate of return than any other ad and was routed through several third-party exchanges, so it reached a wide audience. [...] [Google] added that it would "honour" any payments to publishers which they incurred as a result of the mistake.

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Original Submission

• That Trainee Is A Hurtin' Unit (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday December 08 2018, @08:39PM

  by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Saturday December 08 2018, @08:39PM (#771647) Homepage Journal

  RISKS mediator Peter Neumann with a straight face informed me that a Divide By Zero Error that crashed a naval vessel, resulting in it being towed to port, was found to be the fault of the poor seaman who entered a zero in a data entry field.

  Windows NT FTW. I Am Absolutely Serious.

  --
  Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+1
  Interesting=1, Total=1
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		3