Review your notifications, including critical alerts, standard alerts, and new feature announcements, by selecting the bell icon at the top of every page in Microsoft Advertising. If you have more than one account, you can also access the Accounts Summary page to view the Notifications table that's located on the Notifications tab. Regardless of where you read your notifications, they'll be shown in a specific order.
If you've been using Microsoft Advertising for a while, you'll remember three icons on the top of each page that split alerts into separate categories. The notifications bell unifies these icons and prioritizes the messages for you. Notifications are sorted by their urgency level, which is indicated by colored icons.
Notification type | What it means |
---|---|
Critical (red circle icon) |
Urgent or important issues at the account level—for example, account management, billing, or payment problems that might keep your ads from appearing. Critical notifications include links to the page where you can take action to address the problem. Note: Critical alerts appear both in the notifications list in the bell and as a red bar across the top of your browser window (see below). |
Warning (yellow triangle icon) |
Important account or campaign level issues—for example, account link requests, low funds or budgets, or performance problems. Warning notifications include links to help you address or review the problem, or to open a help article related to the alert. |
Recommendation (teal light bulb icon) |
Opportunities or suggestions to improve campaign performance—for example, ways to better manage budgets or add more keywords. Recommendation notifications include links to pages where you can implement suggested actions or learn more. |
Informational (blue information icon) |
Items of note that don't require immediate attention—for example, new feature alerts, received payments notices, or link request results. Informational notifications may include links to related pages where you can learn more. |
Critical notifications in Microsoft Advertising appear as critical red bar alerts across the top of your browser window. These notifications also appear as critical notifications at the top of your notification list.
Critical alerts are urgent or important issues, usually related to billing, payment, or insertion order problems that might keep your ads from appearing. These alerts need to be resolved as quickly as possible.
You can dismiss a critical notification from the list, but you can’t dismiss a red bar alert—these continue to appear until the issue is resolved. The red bar alert always includes a link or button that allows you to take immediate action on the critical issue. Multiple critical alerts about the same account will appear in a single bar—just select the bar to see all the alerts.
Only critical notifications appear as red bar alerts across the top of your browser window–all other notification types, such as warnings, recommendations, or information, appear only under the notifications bell or in the Notifications table.
The Notifications table, on the Notifications tab on the Account Summary page, provides an expanded view of the list where you can sort, filter, and search to see and prioritize the actions you need to take on your accounts.
Select the column headers to sort by account, notification category, notification type, or severity. The Action column provides resolution options or information.
Filter the table to focus in on the issues you want to address first.
Customers with 1 account or with more than 2,000 accounts will not see the Accounts Summary page.
The Notifications table, on the Notifications tab on the Account Summary page, provides an expanded view of the list where you can sort, filter, and search to see and prioritize the actions you need to take on your accounts.
You can also access the Notifications table from the notifications bell:
Select the column headers to sort by account, notification category, notification type, or severity. The Action column provides resolution options or information.