Google Ads hit by major reporting glitch, exposing competitor data

Google Ads continues to experience a significant outage affecting multiple reporting tools and product management features.

Why we care. This outage impacts advertisers’ ability to manage campaigns and access critical performance data.

The problem, first reported Friday, initially looked like this:

• Down: Report Editor, Dashboards, Saved Reports in web interface.
• Affected: Products, Product Groups, Listing Groups pages across the web, API, and Google Ads Editor.
• Data breach: Unrelated item IDs, product titles, and Merchant Centre information visible to competitors.

Problems persist: As of Monday morning Product, Product groups and Listing groups reports were all still down.

Between the lines. This glitch raises serious privacy concerns, as advertisers can potentially identify direct competitors by searching exposed product titles.

What they’re saying. Google Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin acknowledged the issue on X, and is “actively looking into” it. Yesterday, in her most recent post, Marvin said Google was still working to restore Report Editor and the Products tab.

What to watch. How quickly Google resolves the outage and addresses the data exposure and potential fallout from the privacy breach.

Dig deeper: How to put marketing data into meaningful context

First seen: UK advertising agency, Bidnamic reported a severe data breach on LinkedIn between July 30-31, 2024, with advertisers seeing competitors’ sensitive information in their accounts.

Bottom line. Advertisers should exercise caution when accessing their Google Ads accounts and avoid acting on any data until Google confirms the issue is resolved.