Ad Server Is Down, Publishers Lose Thousands Of Dollars In Revenue

Presently, Google's DoubleClick ad server for publishers is down, and this could be costing some of the world's biggest websites millions of dollars collectively in missed advertising revenue as Google scrambles to solve the problem.

This global issue is also bringing some websites to a standstill as pages wait for ads to load, Business Insider reports.

At the moment, much of the web exists only in a rare, ad-free condition. Don't expect it to last.

Usually when accessing Forbes' site, for example, users are famously served with a full page ad before entering the main homepage. (Forbes competes with Business Insider, obviously.) However, currently, that ad slot is blank and text simply says "waiting for ad.doubleclick.com," which is preventing the page from loading as quickly as it should.

Other sites affected include The Wall Street Journal, BBC.com, Mashable and Business Insider. It appears the problem first arose at around 9 a.m. EST.

People have taken to Twitter to complain about the issue. The DoubleClick for Publishers Help forum is also flooded with questions about the outage.

Some people posting in the forum say their Google account managers have contacted them confirming a "P0 critical issue."

Business Insider has contacted Google for comment. This article will be updated when that has been received.

Google's DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick for Advertisers and Dart Sales Manager came to a halt last back in March 2013, when the services were down for a number of hours, according to a report from MediaPost.