During the weekend, it appears that Google used a backup plan to fulfill bid and advertising requests when its search engine and network of publisher websites became overloaded by the number of people seeking information on Saturday about the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump. 

For some, that backup plan may not have worked as well as the company had hoped. In some cases, higher cost per clicks (CPCs) were charged, or conversion rates collapsed. 

Trump took the stage on July 14 at 6:05 p.m. in Butler, Pennsylvania, and within minutes local time, shots rang out. Google Trends shows that around that time, searches for news on the topic spiked. The top three related queries at the time were: Donald trump shot, donald trump shooting, and donald trump assassination.

"Looks like the shooting blew up the algorithm for Facebook and Google, particularly for Performance Max," said an agency executive who asked for anonymity, but acknowledged that the person who asked for anonymity could not "statistically validate" the numbers. The data suggested it occurred.

There were massive increases in searches and page views on the display network, which led marketers to believe that Google fulfilled ad-inventory requests by dipping into Performance Max campaigns.

The lack of reporting could have contributed to performance, because Google does not provide information on the channel the ad served on, such as Discovery or Display or Search, said one media buyer.

"With Performance Max, we always aim to identify the highest-performing inventory options that align with an advertisers’ specific goals and desired ROI, and deliver the best possible performance across that available inventory," a Google Spokesperson told Performance Marketing Insider.

One advertiser on Saturday and Sunday exceeded Performance Max budgets across the board by 100%. The conversion rates dropped 50%.

Looking at the hourly performance for when impressions begin to increase, the time places it right after the attempted assassination.

"The weirdness began within 30 minutes of the shooting," the unidentified source said. "That's when Performance Max was used to fill other inventory."

Vidcodo experienced problems. “We did see some drops in ROI performance over the weekend, but it varied client by client," said Tim Daly, general manager of Vincodo, adding:  "Performance Max continues to throttle ROI performance back and forth from one day to the next."

He added that unfortunately, it is difficult to determine with any absolute certainty what occurred, but it appears that clients received significantly more display traffic during the weekend than in previous weekends. 

"These recent events support advertisers' concerns that Google needs to return transparency as to where they serve their ads,” Daly said.

Not all agencies had a disruptive experience. Matthew Mierzejewski, SVP, head of activation at iProspect U.S., could not identify any issues.

Nor could Tim Halloran, director of advertising operations at Aimclear. Halloran worked with Aimclear's advertising operations team to analyze Google Performance Max performance during the past weekend and "did not note any abnormalities" in campaigns.

"Although, I can't speak to other's experience this past weekend, the fact that we didn't see anything is likely significant, since we handle a substantial and industry-diverse amount of media spend in Google Ads," Halloran said. 

So, how does Google account for anomalies in search queries and third-party ad-serving demands when something unexpected like this occurs?

And did Performance Max really fulfill the gaps for typical ads? When and if this occurs, how quickly does the system adapt to knowing it’s low-quality traffic?

Artificial intelligence should have seen a change in online behavior and enabled the ability to switch or even switch-off campaigns. It made some marketers wonder whether Google has a fail-safe method in place not to overserve ads to low-quality traffic. The invasion of Israel in September 7, 2023 by Hamas was the last time this media buyer saw similar data.

New Street Research released data Wednesday in a report showing how AI influences the ad industry. The firm expects Google AI Overview advertising to generate $1.7 billion in 2025, $6.7 billion in 2026 and $16.9 billion in 2027.

Performance Marketing Insider reached out to Google for a comment and will update the story with any news.