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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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