Hi,
I've been running a Search Ads campaign since January this year and have already spent quite good money. Overall, the experience and the results are both satisfying (less satisfying the former, more - the latter.) Throughout the months I'm getting about 9% TTR and 45% CR. There is, however, one bug that is continuously annoying me a lot.
My daily cap is $45, and therefore I expect the daily amount to be around this number. Logically, why should it be otherwise? But there are quite a few occurrences since March when some days I see sudden spikes in spent amount. The first occurrence happened on 20th of March when $225 were burned just in a single day. It led to blocking off my card, as it has transaction limits, followed by suspension of the campaign because Apple could not charge the card. Not good for planning, right? Here is the graph: https://pasteboard.co/HsJsDSg.png
I wrote to Apple support team and got the following reply: "...We identified an issue that temporarily caused an overspend of your daily spend cap beyond the normally expected parameters. We have since implemented a fix, and you should no longer experience this issue. Please note that Search Ads may on occasion slightly exceed your daily spend cap, but will never charge you more than your total campaign budget."
Despite the fix, two other occurrences followed in May - $85 and $127: https://pasteboard.co/HsJt3tB.png
And even more in June - $75, $95, $197, and $103: https://pasteboard.co/HsJtces.png
I was quite frustrated that it was happening again and made me unable to plan campaign budgets properly. So I went back to their support and wrote: "We have noticed that there is again an overspend, which is over 4 times than our daily cap set in the campaign settings (about $200 instead of $45), and the day is not over yet. In your last message, you wrote 'We identified an issue that temporarily caused an overspend of your daily spend cap beyond the normally expected parameters. We have since implemented a fix, and you should no longer experience this issue.' Unfortunately, we still experience the issue. Please help and fix ASAP."
For this, I've got the following reply: "Thank you for your patience during this process. Our Technical Teams have concluded their investigation. It was determined that the behavior that you encountered was an isolated occurrence and the behavior has been readdressed to help prevent further occurrences. As a result a refund for the daily cap overspend accrued against your campaign will be applied to your account for this occurrence. The credit in the amount of $152.29 will be applied within the next 48 hours ... We appreciated your patience during this process. Thank you for your understanding and thank you for being a Search Ads customer."
Well, you are welcome, but how about stopping spending 2x, 3x, 4x of the daily budget? (I am not even mentioning that the refund hasn't arrived yet). And guess what happened recently? The second day in July cost me twice as much - $84: https://pasteboard.co/HsJtkHJ.png
Now I have no clue what to do, except just stopping the whole campaign and move to other, more predictable means of app advertisement. I am really sick of this abruptness. Has anyone by any chance experienced same trouble and managed to resolve the issue with Apple guys? Would be great if you could share your experience.
Best,
Roman.
