Microsoft Advertising has temporarily suspended the ability for agencies to send out client connection requests. Instead, the agency needs to reach out to Microsoft support and wait 5-7 days to hear back to be able to manage their client's ad campaigns on Microsoft.
So instead of an agency being able to get running quickly with managing their client's Microsoft Advertising accounts, they now have a delay of about a week to be able to even get started. This is a temporary issue that Microsoft is looking to address.
Kirk Williams posted about this on LinkedIn and told me, "Microsoft has confirmed it is not a bug, and that it is because of fraudulent activity. I'm unsure whether it's temporary, but I sure hope so cause this suuuuucks...."
This is the email he received from Microsoft support:
"These requests have been forwarded to our Engineering team, who will handle the linking on your behalf. At this time, due to a recently implemented security measure, agencies are temporarily unable to send new client connection requests directly. This change was introduced proactively by our team to mitigate fraud risks across the platform, and while your account has not triggered any specific concern, the policy is currently applied universally.
I completely understand how this impacts your workflow, especially when managing multiple client accounts, and I truly empathize with the added time this process now requires. Please rest assured that I’ve submitted the request with priority and have also noted your urgency — our team is working hard behind the scenes to get this completed as soon as possible.
While the general processing timeframe for these types of requests is 5–7 business days, this is only an estimate based on typical scenarios. In practice, these are often completed much sooner, and I will personally monitor the progress for you. I’ll be sure to send a follow-up update once the invites have been successfully sent so you can verify them in your Requests Sent dashboard."
Kirk explained how the process worked previously, he told me, "in the past, we the agency would simply send a request for the CID to the client through Microsoft (how Google MCC links works as well). Now we have to contact MAds support for each request, and they say it will take 5-7 days to process!"
I hope this does not last too long and that Microsoft gets this fixed soon.
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
