Finance

Facebook fail: Outage causes pre-Black Friday and Cyber Monday scare for online retailers

Facebook and their social media apps Messenger and Instagram encountered an outage with their ad manager platform and was later reported by Facebook to be the result of a “server configuration”. This meant that some businesses and media buyers were unable to launch their holiday ad campaigns, manage existing campaigns, or track performance during the almost 7-hour outage. Others were fortunate and only had to wait an hour or so.

This couldn’t have come at a worse time, as businesses around the world were left scrambling to get updates on when they could resume work for their biggest sales period of the year. Service outages aren’t uncommon but rarely have we seen something of this magnitude.

Companies like Crate Club, an online tactical and survival gear club aimed at men, have worked for months to execute and finalize their advertising campaigns and were fortunate to go live in time for the holiday shopping season. Crate Club was delayed for a few hours, but were able to deliver their newest ad, shown below.

You've reached your daily free article limit.

Subscribe and support our veteran writing staff to continue reading.

Get Full Ad-Free Access For Just $0.50/Week

Enjoy unlimited digital access to our Military Culture, Defense, and Foreign Policy coverage content and support a veteran owned business. Already a subscriber?

Facebook and their social media apps Messenger and Instagram encountered an outage with their ad manager platform and was later reported by Facebook to be the result of a “server configuration”. This meant that some businesses and media buyers were unable to launch their holiday ad campaigns, manage existing campaigns, or track performance during the almost 7-hour outage. Others were fortunate and only had to wait an hour or so.

This couldn’t have come at a worse time, as businesses around the world were left scrambling to get updates on when they could resume work for their biggest sales period of the year. Service outages aren’t uncommon but rarely have we seen something of this magnitude.

Companies like Crate Club, an online tactical and survival gear club aimed at men, have worked for months to execute and finalize their advertising campaigns and were fortunate to go live in time for the holiday shopping season. Crate Club was delayed for a few hours, but were able to deliver their newest ad, shown below.

Any online retailer that relies heavily on social media companies for advertising is truly at the mercy of tech giants like Facebook to provide business continuity and reliability. Unfortunately, instances like this are sure to cause a level of mistrust as each holiday shopping season approaches.

It has yet to be seen which companies will rise up to challenge the dominant players like Facebook by either replacing them or pushing them to improve. With Facebook already reeling from recent security breaches, along with public mistrust due to privacy concerns, it will be interesting to see how they respond.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqeCbyUGnqk

The Crate Club is a monthly subscription box that sends its customers some pretty awesome tactical and survival gear, and it’s hand-picked by Special Ops veterans. It also shares the same parent company as NEWSREP. Check it out at https://www.crateclub.us/.

About Nick Coffman View All Posts

Nick is a former United States Marine. He primarily writes about Marine Corps Special Operations as well as digital privacy and security. In his spare time he enjoys hunting and fishing.

COMMENTS

You must become a subscriber or login to view or post comments on this article.

More from SOFREP

REAL EXPERTS.
REAL NEWS.

Join SOFREP for insider access and analysis.

TRY 14 DAYS FREE

Already a subscriber? Log In