About Multi-party approval for Google Ads

Multi-party approval (MPA) is a security feature for Google Ads designed to protect your account from unauthorized activity by requiring a second account administrator to verify sensitive changes. Sensitive actions like adding users or changing user roles will prompt other administrators of your account to approve these changes.

This article explains how Multi-party approval works and how to manage Multi-party approval requests in your account.

On this page

• Get started with Multi-party approval
• About the approval process
• Who can complete approvals
• Review Multi-party approval requests

Get started with Multi-party approval

Multi-party approval secures your account by requiring another administrator's approval for sensitive actions. This can help to block hijacking attempts and unauthorized actions from occurring on your account.

Sensitive actions like adding a new user, removing an existing user, or changing user roles will require approval from a second administrator to complete. As security needs evolve, additional actions may also require this approval process.

About the approval process

When you make a sensitive change to a Google Ads account, a request is sent to all administrators within the hierarchy for approval. All eligible account administrators within your hierarchy will receive an in-product notification to review these changes.

Direct administrators and owner managers of the requestor receive individual notifications for each request, while others in the hierarchy receive a combined digest for multiple requests. Since emails aren’t sent for these approvals, it's important to check your in-product notifications regularly.

Account administrators have 20 days to approve or reject a request before it expires. Requests automatically expire if they aren’t acted upon within 20 days. If the action is still necessary, restart the process to generate a new approval request.

There are currently 3 request statuses for Multi-party approval. These statuses will show next to any actions taken in the account:

• Complete: The action was reviewed and approved by an administrator. The action takes effect and the initiator is notified.
• Denied: The action was reviewed and rejected by an administrator. The proposed action is blocked.
• Expired: If no action is taken within 20 days, the action is rejected.

Who can complete approvals

Multi-party approval requests can be completed by any user with Admin access to the account. If your account requires multi-party approval for sensitive changes, change requests can be approved at the individual account level as well as by any linked manager accounts.

Multi-party approval is only applicable for accounts with more than 3 administrators. If your account transitions from having multiple admin users to a single admin, multi-party approval is paused for your account and all pending requests are canceled to help protect your account. After you add additional admins to your account, you’ll automatically be re-enrolled. The only exception is after a compromised event, where any pending legitimate requests are automatically approved after removing any unauthorized activity.

Review Multi-party approval requests

You can review change requests on the “Access and security” page in your Google Ads account. Notifications for pending requests appear at the individual account level as well as within any linked manager accounts. Manager accounts can view and approve pending requests for any of their linked child accounts.

Approve or reject a request

After a request is submitted, another administrator must review and accept the request for it to take effect. Here’s how to review your pending requests:

1. Go to Access and security within the Admin menu 👁 Admin Icon
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2. In the "Pending invitations" menu, select Review request.
3. Review the details of each request. Select Approve to approve the request, and Deny to reject it. You can manage added users in the “Users” tab under Access and Security.

Revoke a request

If you need to revoke a pending request that you initiated, follow the steps below. Note that you can only revoke a request if it hasn’t already been approved or denied by another administrator.

1. Go to Access and security within the Admin menu 👁 Admin Icon
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2. In the “Pending invitations” menu, select Revoke Request next to a request you’d like to cancel.

This will delete the notifications associated with the request for all other account administrators.