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We would usually speak to the client and they’re ok with it so then nothing happens. They’ve always been able to find $$ at the end of the year or through previous year credit rollover. Sometimes you would try to buy value add and cover up the cost in that. I guess big agencies can handle it through value addition usually. Like this is how you would go about it:
Step 1: check if this can be covered in the existing plan somehow if there was underspend on another vendor/plan
Step 2: speak to vendor and see what they can do how much of the $$ can be recovered
Step 3: let the client know and hopefully it’s the first time this has happened and they are supportive but go to them with a solution, like these $$ can be recovered from last year credits or xx underspend or whatever
I’ve seen a lot of errors and made them myself many times. Usually it’s a result of moving too fast and being too short staffed to properly check work. We’ve never fired anyone over it. If the client can’t take it on, we usually have the vendor cover it and make it up to them later. Or write it off.
I’ve seen overspends in social of upwards of $500k. I’ve never seen anyone get fired outright for it.
Not fired people but have used it to enhance QA processes and enforce expectations from other teams - time and clear source of truth needed to execute properly. Also matters how client takes it, if they understand the relationship must be good otherwise and if they are way less understanding might be larger problems?
We track the errors that are made and do an analysis to determine if it's human error, a process problem, or negligence. Everything is tracked from the type of problems to who was involved and so on. If it's fixable, it's usually fine and considered a teachable moment, but large negligent or regularly occurring errors are not ok, especially if it's by the same person and not due to a bad process. Errors due to bad process trigger process adjustments.
9/10 real agencies have “errors and omissions” insurance to cover human f/ups. And it happens. [personal rant: I believe GGL and DSPs make fuckups easily made or missable BY DESIGN].
But there’s another thing I’d add to the good points shared above (and I agree with all: it happens.):
If you let it go repeatedly, you’re creating a morale problem. That buyer’s colleagues know he/she fucked up and can deservedly feel unfairly critiqued for less serious feedback they might receive (“I had a misspelled keyword, but Toby pissed away $50k?!!”).
“Hands on keyboard” work is high pressure, low reward, unforgiving and undervalued. Assuming if was buyer error (and, as someone above noted, not an accounting thing caused by chain-of-command BS), managers need to enforce consequence to issues at this scale - move the buyer off the account, mandate retraining, etc.
Otherwise business insurance has a valid case NOT to cover future E&O claims you might make, and your other buyers will know these things are serious, though (hopefully) not something they can’t bounce back from.
Usually you look at the % of error too. $100k is just 1% of a $10 million buy. I think the answer is definitely it depends.
I agree. Depends on the error though.
Oh. Also, when multiple vendors bill on different cycles ASF miscalculations can result in an overspend. For one client we calculated ASFs on a daily basis (based off impressions & clicks) because we were a part of multiple calendars (client, vendors, and agencies all kept different calendars). That’s a finance issue and if the agency was smart they would give us a dedicated finance person instead of blaming analysts during reconciliation
But yeah, carry a zero wrong or input the wrong decimal you shouldn’t be a media buyer