Hi All Google says that they usually review ads in 1 to 3 business days, or even sooner, however my ad is been "Under Review" for over a week now, and still no sign of it being approved. Is this normal, and what is the longest anyone has had to wait to get their ad approved? Also, are there any factors that affect how long it takes. eg do ads with higher daily budgets or CPC get priority?
Manual review takes forever at the moment. Contact support and they will escalate it to the front of the queue and you'll probably get a response within a couple of hours.
Most ads are automatically approved by the system. What makes an ad go into the review bucket are trigger words and likely a few other things. I believe there's also a certain small percentage of ads that will get reviewed no matter what, just as a control. Note that I'm talking about text ads. Image ads will all be manually reviewed, no automation here at all. Now, once in the review bucket, the time it takes for someone to review your ad depends on how many they have to do and how fast they can review. It will take a lot longer if you're 10,000th in line than if you are 500th. The key is to be patient but it normally doesn't take long. No other factors will affect that time, not budget, CPC or anything else. Also, don't "resubmit", that is, editing or creating the same ad: you're just putting it back at the end of the line and have to start over. Sometimes, ads being reviewed seem to fall between the cracks as it were, for whatever reason. This happens much less these days, at least in my experience. In fact, I can't remember the last time and I manage client accounts creating hundreds of ads. Not that it has happened often in the past, but when an ad was still under review after 5 business days, I'd send them a gentle reminder. This always got the ad unstuck within 24 hours, often within hours. Like I said, be patient.
Yes that is normal, some of my adwords ad took more than two weeks to get approved. But I think you should contact them they will reply very quickly. Good luck.
Is this a flash banner or text ad? Text ads are normally approved instantly, flash banners normally take 1-3 business days, but can take up to 2 weeks.