Oh man, I’ve had something eerily similar happen—Ads Manager inexplicably spun up duplicate ad sets overnight and drained my budget before I even logged in. It turned out to be a sync lag between the UI and server, so any quick tweaks you made manually weren’t reflected until hours later, and the system re-applied them as “new” campaigns.
What helped me was setting up real-time billing alerts (so I get a ping at even $50 spend) and using the API to programmatically pause campaigns during off-hours. I also keep a spreadsheet of active campaign IDs and run a 5-minute cron job that checks for duplicates and shuts them off immediately. It’s a pain to set up, but it’s saved me from another surprise $1K bill.
Have you tried linking a simple webhook alert or using something like Zapier to auto-pause if you detect more than one campaign with the same name? That little safety net might buy you enough time to catch the glitch before it burns your budget.
