Warning: our Slack bot ate $400 in ad credits last month

I set up an automation to alert the team on Slack every time our Google Ads spend hit $50, but nobody realized it was firing on old conversion pings from last quarter. By the time I checked the dashboard on Friday, we'd blown through $400 in 3 weeks on duplicate alerts and zero new clicks. Has anyone else had a bot or notification tool quietly drain their budget like this, and what do you use to keep automations in check?

2 comments

2 Comments

pat36011d ago

Wait, those bot alerts just notified you, they didn't actually spend the ad money themselves.

-1

the_joel11d agoMost Upvoted

Wait, is that actually how it works though? Like, the bots just watch the alerts roll in and nobody's touching the real budget? That kinda makes the whole warning system feel like theater, you know. If someone's running a scammy ad campaign, they're not gonna stop just because a bot shouted at them, they'll just find a way to hide better. Wouldn't it be smarter to have the alerts trigger a manual review or something, so at least a human sees what's going on before the money really starts flying?