Google AdWords
On April 10th, 2009, Michael Minkus (one of the SoftwarePromotions AdWords team) posted a blog entry entitled New AdWords Ads Increasingly Getting Stuck in the ‘Under Review’ Black Hole.
“It seems like every new ad I create takes longer and longer to actually begin running.
Depending on the client, and which AdWords GUI format they’re using, the new ads assume the label of ‘under review’ or ‘Active’, but in either case the ads exist in a state of limbo, unable to accrue impressions or clicks.”
Little has changed since then. Actually, aside from changing ‘under review‘ to ‘pending review‘, nothing has changed at all.
And some of the comments added to Michael’s original post suggest that many other people are experiencing the same frustration.
I have an idea.
If you’re experiencing the frustration of these ad approval delays, please add your comments to this post. Detail your frustration, giving your real name and email address where possible, and if we get enough of a response, we’ll pass the whole thread onto our Google account rep.
Also, if you’re planning on attending this year’s Software Industry Conference in Boston next week, I’m kicking off the conference with the Advanced Google AdWords session at 9:00 on Thursday morning. I hope you can join me there.
I am seeing the same thing. I posted about this two months ago:
http://www.alwinhoogerdijk.com/2009/03/30/the-word-download-in-ads-triggers-manual-approval/
and later here:
http://www.alwinhoogerdijk.com/2009/05/22/pending-review-or-under-review/
In my case, the manual approval seemed to be triggered by using the word “download” in my ad copy.
Dave, are you seeing the same thing? I guess that many Google ads for software use that word…
BTW: I have been having more problems with the word “download”. Many of my ads say “Download movie details” or “Download DVD details” and Google disabled those because of “Copyright violations”.
Guess they thought I was offering illegal movie downloads…. Sigh…
So I called them and asked them to approve my ads. They did right. Then the same thing happened a few days later. I called them again and now they have flagged my account to allow this usage of the word “download”.
Adwords has become sclerotic. Filled with bugs and their customer support has the slowest response time ever.
They should take a course with Godaddy.
You people are always complaining. You only have yourself to blame. Learn the system. Stupid is no excuse.
I’ve just started to create my first ads ever and I never heard anyone talk about this. I just assumed it might take up to 24 hours tops but I’ve been waiting longer for a review. I wonder if there are simply more people trying to advertise and google hasn’t wanted to hire enough people to handle the new business?
I have created some image ads and its been under status Pending review for 5 days. Too bad on Google part.
I had an ad text change that was pending review for 29 days. I finally did the Adwords Online Chat with an adword rep to inquire and it was approved later that day.
TIP: Don’t ever edit the text in a currently running ad because it will pause and go under “pending review”. Create a NEW ad and let THAT one get reviewed and keep running the unchanged ad in the meantime.
Yes, this is super frustrating, my image ads are still in pending review mode for over 2 weeks. This is ridiculous!! It’s so freaking hard to do business with Google these days…
Add me as another advertiser who is sat bored looking at ‘pending review’ for a totally inoffensive ad. Other ad companies do not waste my time like this, and despite spending hundreds of dollars each month with google, it seems they are not keen for my money.
So the solution is simple, each month more and more of my ad budget gets spent with googles rivals.
Its amazing how clueless a supposedly clever company can be isn’t it?
Why won’t they give us the equivalent of “Estimated Hold Times” on Ads Under Review and Ads Pending Review.
Take the total number of ads in review queue …
Divided by the average rate of speed that ads are currently being reviewed …
Equals “Your ad will be reviewed in approximately ## hours” and happier customers
Its one thing for the review process to take days … its another thing to keep us totally in the dark about how long it will take
I am totally frustrated too. Just bought all kinds of manuals on PPC (Perry Marshall’s newest) and now stuck dead in the water after spending hours optimizing my site. But, It seems I am NOT alone which is a relief. Thank you for the feedback on this issue!
I’m in the same boat too – I changed an ad that’s been running for 2 years (to alter the landing page to a more specific page) and its now stuck in review hell.
Thanks to this post, I can at least now guess it’s because the word “download” appears in the ad (legitimate download of course).
On the bright side, its spurred me to get signed up with Bing (default search engine in new IE, this will become more and more important) and Facebook (not something I’d considered, but much easier to target to interested groups than keyword matching).
I’ve gone from Google fan to Google hater in one day.
I just canceled my account with Google because they are increasingly sucking at what they are suppose to be in business for, service us merchants and customers. Since they failed to do that I have taken my business elsewhere. Google is NOT the only cpc company out there. So many to choose from so I canceled my account and they can kiss my ass for all I care!
Google is making people angry and it’s a matter of time before another great company comes along and takes their business. Just as Google did Yahoo. Does any of this remind you of the once great Yahoo?
Next…
Same thing happening to me also… its been one week.. still pending status
This has happened to me for toooo many times too often, I constantly have rolling campaigns running on my account, and every time Adwords just can’t deliver my ads at an acceptable time frame.
I have tried filing a complaint and the 2 very basic feed backs I got are as follows:
Case 1:
Submitted within 3 working days from the time of ads submission – their response was that it was too early and they are doing their best to push ads online and basically my request was ignored.
Case 2:
I submitted the complaint 4 working days after ads submission – their response was given 3 further working days later, with a response basically saying ads are online so what are you complaining about? (it was clearly forced online right before they replied my email). for I checked my ads every morning, and I got the response they gave hours after that morning which ads were still pending review.
This has happened to me for toooo many times too often, I constantly have rolling campaigns running on my account, and every time Adwords just can\’t deliver my ads at an acceptable time frame.
I have tried filing a complaint and the 2 very basic feed backs I got are as follows:
Case 1:
Submitted within 3 working days from the time of ads submission – their response was that it was too early and they are doing their best to push ads online and basically my request was ignored.
Case 2:
I submitted the complaint 4 working days after ads submission – their response was given 3 further working days later, with a response basically saying ads are online so what are you complaining about? (it was clearly forced online right before they replied my email). for I checked my ads every morning, and I got the response they gave hours after that morning which ads were still pending review.
I’ve had an image ad pending review for over 3 months. Contacted Google Support who said they would look into it – nothing. Absolutely crazy. I have now started advertising elsewhere as it’s simply not possible to run a reliable campaign any more.
I have had my ads pending review for 2 days now. It just sucks!
What a poor quality support, I am beginning to hate Adwords! They are making a shitload of money. Why the heck can’t they employ a thousand more employees. It just plainly sucks to experience this.
Yahoo is way better than google. I got my ads running instantly and even have a direct customer support link. Adwords offers ZERO support in that case. What can we do about it?
When these companies get too big, they begin to hurt people like us. That is why competition is too necessary in any market.
This is an enormous frustration. Though I haven’t noticed much problems with the text approval process, the display process seems indefiniate.
I have been waiting for days. Google, I really really want to give you my money!!! I know you already have billions and my couple thousand doesn’t seem like much but please just turn on my ads!!!
In the past when this happened I opened a chat session and got someone to activate my ads on the spot, but the live chat feature seems to have dissappeared.
Wow i thought i was the only one who was getting super annoyed at Google and Adwords! been bashing my head around the very low CTR and image ads pending review. Google customer support is a TOTAL joke! I asked a question way back when i signed up. Week later i get a form letter telling me to go to the FAQ to find the “answer” to my question! it wasnt even what i was asking. i’m super annoyed at Google
Ad has been Under Review for 8 days now. E-mail them and got automated response back. Guess I’ll just wait and see.
I find this fascinating. I am literally waiting to give Google money. “Here Google! Take my money! Please!” and after 2 weeks with my ads “under review” here I am. It’s beyond my comprehension. If Goog wants to review some ads, fine….do it. A day, couple days…fine. Two weeks? If the ads, for whatever reason, don’t work…fine…tell me and I’ll fix them. Now I know, my $30 or $40 a day is nothing to Google. Literally nothing. And when I take my business to Yahoo
Possible solution? Like everyone here, I had new ads that were taking forever to be approved. In desperation, I turned on my old ads that I had previously paused. After refreshing the screen my new ads changed to pending. Now I paused my old ads and the new ones are still approved. Perhaps there is some algorithm comparing the similarity of active ads to pending ads? Perhaps it was just coincidence.
GOOGLE DOESN\’T APPARENTLY \"WANT MY BUSINESS\" EITHER…… In a way, their lack of attention to pending campaigns sends the message: \"ONLY USE GOOGLE FOR THE FREE STUFF – OPTING FOR ONE OF THEIR PAID FOR SERVICES IS FUTILE\" Solution: Back to FaceBook for our ad budget?!?!?!
Waiting over a week for 1 ad, 2 weeks for another. Both ads are inoffensive banners for a couple webhosting companies. I think getting my money back is the next priority.
Well, finally I got the ‘adwords pending review’ community now, I thought that I was the only person with this problem since I am a newbie in Adwords Campaign. I have changed or edit the ads text for many times because it was pending review announcement. Then I get frustrated and found this community. Well, I feel Happy now, to meet with you people sharing the problems.
ya i dont get it….is there somewhere else to do advertising through without the stupid pending??
mine has been “pending review” for 2 months, i never edited the text, all keywords were approved, i added my billing info, and even called numerous times and got “it should be up and running in a couple days now” why would they say that if they never know for sure??
Here are my thoughts.
Situation: Consumers unable to use AdWords service. Loss of revenue for Google.
Solution: More resource allocated to AdWords by Google enabling AdWords services to meet industry acceptable service levels (24 business hours tops would be nice, yes?)
Catalyst for solution: Constructive feedback and suggestions provided by us to Google.
Counter-productive activity: Complaining. Google only knows what we want when we take the time to tell it. Good will goes a long way.