Google Ads multi-party approval: what it means when you add or remove users

Google Ads multi-party approval means that on an account with more than three administrators, adding a user, removing a user, changing a role, or linking the account to a manager account waits for a second admin to approve. The second admin approves under Admin > Access and security, under Pending invitations, with Review request and then Approve. If nobody approves within 20 days, the request expires and the change is not made.

This guide is for agencies whose invitation or link request seems to do nothing, and for advertisers who see a review request they did not expect. Everything here comes from Google's multi-party approval article unless another source is named.

When it applies

Google says multi-party approval applies only to accounts with more than three administrators. An account with one, two or three admins makes these changes at once, as before.

If an account goes down to a single admin, approval is paused and all pending requests are canceled. When more admins are added, the account is enrolled again by itself.

One Google page says something slightly different. The article on email domain requirements says approval may be triggered when the account has three or more active administrators. The multi-party approval article itself says more than three, and that is the one this guide follows. If your account has exactly three admins, be ready for either.

What needs approval

Google names these sensitive actions:

• adding a new user
• removing an existing user
• changing a user's role
• a manager account linking an existing, independent Google Ads account under it

Google says more actions may be added over time. Its Security requests tab already groups requests by category, and lists billing changes next to user management and manager account linking.

Google also says read-only roles and API users are exempt. The Google Ads API documentation describes approvals for API calls too, so read that exemption narrowly (see the section for tool makers below).

How the second admin approves

Any other admin on the account can approve. Google's steps:

1. Go to Access and security in the Admin menu.
2. Under Pending invitations, select Review request.
3. Check what is being asked and who asked. Select Approve or Deny.

The Security requests tab on the same page shows pending requests grouped by category, with View next to each.

Admins of a linked manager account can approve too. They see requests across their client accounts under Admin > Access and security on the Users tab, by turning on Show users in full hierarchy.

The person who started a request cannot approve it. They can revoke it under Pending invitations with Revoke Request, as long as no other admin has acted on it yet.

A request ends in one of three states: Complete (approved, and the change takes effect), Denied (blocked) or Expired (nobody acted within 20 days, so it is rejected).

Emails: check the account, not the inbox

Google's article is not consistent about email. One section says emails are not sent for these approvals, so admins should check the notifications inside Google Ads. Another section lists approval request, approved, rejected and reminder emails, with one reminder after 3 days, and a later paragraph says reminders go out every 6 hours.

The safe reading: do not wait for an email. The admins who need to approve should look under Admin > Access and security in Google Ads. Google also says suspended accounts get no emails, and that Google Ads support cannot approve, deny or bypass a request. Only the account's own admins can.

What the agency sees while it waits

For the agency, the change has not happened yet:

• An email invitation waits for a second admin at the client to approve it. Google's developer blog says that, for invitations made through the API, the invitation email goes out only after that approval, so the agency may have nothing to accept until then.
• A manager link request for an existing account needs a second admin's approval too. Google says this protects both accounts but does not say on which side the second admin sits, so look under Pending invitations in both the manager account and the client account.
• A removal or role change stays as it was.

What helps:

1. Ask the client how many admins the account has. If it is more than three, approval applies.
2. Ask the client which admin will approve, and ask them to look under Pending invitations the same day.
3. If 20 days pass, start again: send the invitation or link request anew.

A client with many admins can also lower the ones who no longer need Admin. Those changes need approval too while the account has more than three admins, but once it has three or fewer, later changes take effect at once.

For tool makers: the API side

This section is for developers of tools that invite users or change access through the Google Ads API. Dates are from Google's own posts.

• On 25 June 2026 Google announced multi-party approvals in the Google Ads API, with the rollout starting on 27 July 2026. Inviting a user, changing a user's access level and removing a user can return a pending review instead of taking effect. Support was added in API versions v24.2, v23.3, v22.2 and v21.2.
• The API guide lists pending reviews through the multi_party_auth_review resource and resolves them with MultiPartyAuthReviewService. The reviewer must be a different user from the requester, and the requester can revoke. Reviews expire after 20 days.
• On 4 November 2026 Google announced changes starting the week of 7 December 2026. When approval is needed, the invitation resource is created only after approval, and resource_name is left empty in the response. A new STALE_MULTI_PARTY_AUTH_REQUEST error arrives in v26.2 for requests whose target changed. Up to 100 reviews can be resolved in one call.

The API guide we read covers invitations, access level changes and removals. It does not mention manager links, although the help article says linking an existing account through the Google Ads interface requires approval.

No tool can skip multi-party approval: a second admin has to approve, in Google Ads or through the API. A tool can show that a request is waiting and tell the client which admin has to act.