Charlotte Henry

Some small advertisers have complained to Bloomberg News that AI has left them locked out and unable to manage campaigns. Given helping small businesses was at the heart of the social media giant’s complaints against Apple, this is somewhat ironic.

“The actual injury, especially for advertisers and marketers, is immense,” said [Chris] Raines, who runs a digital media company called Bullhorn Media. “Had I not had that workaround, my business would have went away.” As he investigated solutions, Raines started hearing about other ad buyers in the same position. Harrison Kugler, an independent digital media manager in New Jersey, was similarly locked out while running ads for his client, a local comedy club. It took him 26 hours to get his account back, during which he estimates he spent $200 in Facebook ads without his usual level of oversight. In New Zealand, marketing consultant Sam Frost was frozen out of his account, and there were no other administrators linked to some of the Facebook Pages running the ads. He spent “a couple hundred dollars” before he was allowed back in.