Google Ad Manager outage costs big websites ad sales

A Google service relied upon by many large websites to sell and display ads was down for about three hours Thursday, denying major news publishers revenue during the crucial holiday period, two sources familiar with the matter said.

“The issue with Google Ad Manager has been resolved, and ad serving has now been restored for the affected users,” Google said in a tweet on Thursday evening. “We apologise for the inconvenience.”

News websites such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times were affected by the issue, one of the sources said.