Charged for impressions even though campaign was paused

[richwannabe]

I paused the campaign at 3:43 PM yesterday. According to my stats I only received 25 impressions yesterday 0 clicks. Today I checked my account and have been charged for over 3000 impressions that supposedly happened today, BUT my campaign had been paused for more than 17 hours!!! Not to mention I was charged $4 over my daily budget. I have contacted Google but don't expect to hear back for a couple of days. Anyone have this happen?

[GuyFromChicago]

You have to remember the stats you see are not real time. There's an "up to 3 hour delay". My guess is the numbers you were looking at when you paused your campaign were not current.

Regarding the daily over bill, that happens as they tie the budegt into a monthly number.

"On any single day, the AdWords system may deliver up to 20% more ads than your daily budget calls for. This helps make up for other days in which your daily budget is not reached. However, you'll never be charged more than your average daily budget over the course of a month. For example: if your daily budget is $10 and the month has 30 days, you might be charged up to $12 on any single day but your monthly charges will never exceed $300. "

https://adwords.google.com/support/b...py?answer=6312

[richwannabe]

Originally Posted by GuyFromChicago

You have to remember the stats you see are not real time. There's an "up to 3 hour delay". My guess is the numbers you were looking at when you paused your campaign were not current.

Regarding the daily over bill, that happens as they tie the budegt into a monthly number.

"On any single day, the AdWords system may deliver up to 20% more ads than your daily budget calls for. This helps make up for other days in which your daily budget is not reached. However, you'll never be charged more than your average daily budget over the course of a month. For example: if your daily budget is $10 and the month has 30 days, you might be charged up to $12 on any single day but your monthly charges will never exceed $300. "

https://adwords.google.com/support/b...py?answer=6312

No, these are the stats that show right now in my account.

Yesterday Feb 13th 23 impressions
Today February 14th 3634 impressions

Even if there was a 3 hour delay that would only take us until 6:43 PM YESTERDAY! According to these stats it would mean there is at least an 8 hour delay {not sure when those stats became available overnight} in reporting? That is not acceptable!

[richwannabe]

I just checked the account again and the impressions have increaed to 3,676

[GuyFromChicago]

See:

https://adwords.google.com/support/b...y?answer=14803

If the info you need isn't there I'd say the only people who can help you out are on the AdWords team. Do let us know how it turns out.

[richwannabe]

That link helped, thanks Even though I may be billed for the charges up to 60 days after they have accrued, the dates should still be correct. According to that FAQ i should have stopped accruing charges by 4:43 PM Feb 13th (which any adjustments should be on the Feb 13th totals, not Feb 14th totals.

Ths specific page on my site can only be reached through 2 specific advertising campaigns. According to my stats that is how it breaks down:

Adsense Page Impressions (aka traffic from advertising campaigns)
Feb 13th : 22
Feb 14th : 11

Adwords Clickthroughs

Feb 13th : 23 {Yahoo 23 Google 0}
Feb 14th: 13 {Yahoo 0 Google 13}

I shut both campaigns off around the same time and should not have received any charges beyond that point (or an hour later).... According to Adwords and Adsense, I accrued charges and clicks into Feb 14th...

I'll let you know what I find out

Edited at 5:53 PM - Impressions are now 3,714

[richwannabe]

Just a follow up to this - the campaign is still paused, account is now showing 4,019 impressions and not a word from Google...

[malcolmlo]

My question is, how are you getting charged for impressions from adwords?

I thought it was only clicks you get charged for?

Or are these terms getting confused?

If you have 1,000 impressions and 10 clicks, you should be charged for the 10 clicks and thats it, right?

If you have 2,000 impressions and 0 clicks, you shouldnt get charged anything i thought?

Now im confused

[richwannabe]

Originally Posted by malcolmlo

My question is, how are you getting charged for impressions from adwords?

I thought it was only clicks you get charged for?

Or are these terms getting confused?

If you have 1,000 impressions and 10 clicks, you should be charged for the 10 clicks and thats it, right?

If you have 2,000 impressions and 0 clicks, you shouldnt get charged anything i thought?

Now im confused

For site targeted campaigns your pay for impressions, not clicks

I received a response from Google (luckily because this account has gone $95 over what I wanted to spend this week and is still counting impressions today )

Thank you for your email. I'm sorry to hear that you've had trouble with
your Google AdWords campaign. I understand your paused campaigns are
accruing clicks and impressions. Our engineers are currently working to
solve the problem and hope to reach a resolution shortly. We appreciate
you for your patience.

Once this issue has been resolved by the engineers, please be assured that
any applicable credits will be automatically processed.

[hammy70]

Glad to see it's not just me.

I have 2 campaign's that have been paused since 12th February and are still racking up about $15 to $20 per day in clicks! (seems to be ignoring daily budget as well)

Emailed Google and got the same response (fault due to technical problems and engineers working to correct the problem).

[louie_alcantara]

hello,

had the exact problems... i hope google refund us or something..

here is my thread plus the picture of the campaign summary

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=247083

[Robbed]

This is absolutely crazy! Give up any hope of them refunding the money - I have been in contact with them all week over this after the charged my credit card for over $1500 for clicks accrued while all my campaign were paused!

They have admitted its a technical fault and are offering to give adwords credits for the amount but are flat out refusing to refund the charges! This is horrible - I don't know what to do!

[louie_alcantara]

wats worse is that after adjusting they only gave me about 10 dollars.. did you tell your credit card company?

[Robbed]

Yes I disputed all charges with my credit card company so we'll see what happens. I can't believe they are doing this..

[jopetho]

I am not a fan of the site targeted ads. It robbed me big time!. I spend something like $100 dollars and got 25 clicks !!. A PPC equivalent is $4.00 per click !! A PPC advt cost would have been around 25cents a click.

[GuyFromChicago]

Originally Posted by jopetho

I am not a fan of the site targeted ads. It robbed me big time!. I spend something like $100 dollars and got 25 clicks !!. A PPC equivalent is $4.00 per click !! A PPC advt cost would have been around 25cents a click.

That's not at all what this thread is about....

[Robbed]

I think we need to organize those affected by this and do something about it together - we need to make them realize that this kind of behavior and immoral business practice is not acceptable.. Once it starts to hurt their image and upper management realize its not going away they may not ignore us so easily ..

[louie_alcantara]

yeah.. also saw excessive or multiple adsense charges.. anyway hope we can all get our money back

[richwannabe]

Are you telling me I am not getting my money back - for THEIR mistake! This is RIDICULOUS!!!! The last communications I had with them was about 2 weeks ago, they wrote me a rude email basically reapeating what they have told me previously. I have not heard from them since.

I think Google is getting too big for their britches and now they are in the business of ripping people off. Well, if you ask me the whole Adwords/Adsense is a "rip off", so maybe not so far off.

I am now off to dispute the charges with my credit card company....

[Robbed]

richwannabe, here is a summary of an email i recieved from them this morning:

They Thank me for my email. They apologize for any confusion.
They understand that I would like a refund for the amount of charges accrued due to a
technical issue, instead of a credit. At this time, they are unable to
provide a refund of the charges accrued. They will still automatically
credit my account for the additional advertising activity which my
campaign accrued after the campaign was paused.

I think we need to organize those affected by this and pressure Google - maybe with a class action lawsuit and definitely with a surge of negative publicity - they can't be allowed to get away with this...