How to Resolve Criterion Hub Warning “Ad group is paused”?
In this article I will show you how to resolve the Criterion Hub warning “Ad group is paused.” You can sometimes see it on your Suggestions Review page when you are reviewing criteria that Adspert suggested for your advertising campaigns.
This warning means that your ad group destination is paused. Until you resolve it, the suggested criteria cannot be added to the specified destination ad group.
A short reminder before we move on: for the Criterion Hub features to work, your advertising campaigns need to be optimized by Adspert. If you would like to get criterion suggestions for your advertising campaigns, you first need to take a step back and start optimizing selected campaigns with Adspert.
Follow the steps below to understand and learn how to resolve the “Ad group is paused” warning on the Suggestions Review page.
Step 1: Recognize the Warning
After Adspert diligently harvests, refines and qualifies suitable criteria, it serves them to you on the Criterion Hub’s Suggestions Review page so you can review them.
Usually you see either a checkmark of a cross symbol from the “Accept” column – that’s how you can accept or reject a criterion. But sometimes there’s an exclamation mark icon instead. This means that Adspert is warning you about something.
So: your next step is to identify what exactly is the warning about.
Step 2: Identify the Warning
This article guides you only on how to resolve the “Ad group is paused” issue. There are other Criterion Hub warnings that help you keep your advertising accounts in line.
So before you continue to the next step, make sure this really is the issue you are addressing:
Hover over the red exclamation mark on the left, in the Accept column. It should read “Invalid destination”.
Hover over the red exclamation mark on the right, in the Destination column. It should read “Ad group is paused”.
If this all checks out, proceed to the next step. If not, check the Help Center for instructions to solve another issue or contact us.
Step 3: Activate Paused Ad Group or Change Destination:
There are two ways to resolve the “Ad group is paused”. Either you activate the paused ad group, or you change the destination.
Here are both ways:
Activate Paused Ad Group:
Log in to Amazon Seller Central
Find the ad group in question and check if it is active or not.
If the ad group is active, then some of the campaigns might be paused.
If a campaign is paused, reactivate it and make sure that the ad group is active, if necessary activate both.
Change the destination from a paused to an active ad group:
Locate the criterion suggestion that has a paused ad group as a destination (Criterion Hub > Suggestions Review)
Navigate to the “Actions” column. Click the “...” icon and select “Edit Destinations”
Follow the process to edit destination from current, paused ad group, to another, active ad group. Read this article for a step-by-step tutorial on how to edit destinations for criteria suggestions.
After you either activate the ad group or choose a different destination, you can proceed as usual and add criteria to your ad group campaign. Please see how to add or reject criteria in this article.
Option 2: Reject Criterion Suggestion:
Besides resolving the “Ad group is paused” warning, there is another option. You can reject the suggested criterion by simply clicking “X” in the “Accept” column.
However, in this case, the criterion will not be added to your campaign. If you do want to add it, then you need to follow one of the two warning resolution options above.