What alerts do
Alerts tell you when something goes wrong in a connected Google Ads account between your logins. Hero Marketer checks each account at 06:00 in the account's time zone. It checks budget pace and spend spikes every hour from 09:00 to 22:00. When a check finds a problem, Hero Marketer raises an alert. There are 17 built-in alert types. You can also make your own rules. See Create a custom alert.
When Hero Marketer checks your accounts
Hero Marketer does not check your accounts in real time. Most alerts appear one time each day.
- The 06:00 check runs at 06:00 in the account's time zone. It reads the data of the previous days. It runs 14 of the 17 alert types, most custom alerts, and all automations.
- The hourly checks run every hour from 09:00 to 22:00. They run Daily budget running out too fast, Account spend spiking, and custom alerts on Daily spend (account).
- The connection check runs with every check. Hero Marketer also finds an expired Google sign-in within about an hour.
- Automations act at most one time each day, in the 06:00 check.
- No check reads Google Ads between about 22:15 and 06:00.
What alerts cost
Alerts run as part of the daily checks. Daily checks cost 0.25 credits a day for each connected account. One charge covers alerts and automations. The charge starts when you buy credits for the first time. To stop it, turn off all 17 alert types and all automations. Or disconnect the account.
- When you connect an account, Hero Marketer runs one free scan. The free scan does not send email.
- After the free scan, the checks run only while you pay for daily checks.
- When your credits run out, the checks continue for 3 days at no charge. Then the checks pause.
- No daily charge applies to an account while its Google Ads connection broken alert is active.
For more information, see Monitoring and the daily rate.
Where alerts show up
- In the app. Every alert goes to the bell and to the Alerts inbox, whatever your email setting is. The bell is in the app header. Its red badge shows your count of active alerts. The Alerts inbox is under Monitoring in the sidebar. It shows your 100 most recent alerts.
- Email. Ten alert types also send an email by default. You can turn email on or off for each alert type. See Configure alert preferences.
Alerts come by email and in the app only. There are no push, SMS, Slack, or webhook alerts. Alerts have no severity levels and no read or unread state. The inbox has no search.
Alert emails
These rules apply to every alert email:
- Alert emails come from imp@alerts.heromarketer.io, with the sender name Hero Marketer. They go to the email address of your Hero Marketer sign-in.
- One email holds all the new alerts of one alert type from one check.
- You get a maximum of 10 alert emails each day (UTC). After that, alerts go to the app only.
- An email shows the account ID, the alert title, and the alert text. It does not link to the alert in the app. To open the alert, open Hero Marketer and click the bell, or open Alerts.
- A Google Ads connection broken email has a Go to connections button.
- When an automation acted, the email names the action first. Each item has a Revert link to the Automations page. The email itself cannot revert the change.
- Hero Marketer does not send a new email while the condition of an active alert continues. It does not send an email when an alert resolves.
- The 06:00 check and the hourly checks do not email the first alerts that they find on an account. These alerts go to the app only. In the alert drawer, the Emailed row shows Suppressed on first monitoring pass. This can occur long after you connect the account. It does not apply to Google Ads connection broken.
- Alerts from the free scan are not emailed.
What Hero Marketer checks
Alert settings groups the 17 alert types into three sections. For the default rule of each alert type, see Alert types.
- Protect. Problems with your connection, your conversion tracking, your budget, your spend, and your ad delivery. Five alert types:
- Google Ads connection broken
- Conversion tracking stopped working
- Daily budget running out too fast
- Account spend spiking
- Campaign stopped serving
- Performance. The results of your campaigns against their own baselines. Eight alert types:
- Campaign spending without converting
- Search terms wasting budget
- Profitable campaign capped by budget
- Campaign not spending its budget
- Click through rate dropping
- Conversion rate dropping
- Cost per click spiking
- Cost per conversion spiking
- Governance. Quality drops and changes made outside Hero Marketer. Four alert types:
- Losing impression share to competitors
- Keyword Quality Score dropping
- Responsive search ad got weaker
- Account changed outside Hero Marketer
Why this is different from Google's own emails
The built-in alerts do not repeat the emails that Google sends about account suspension, billing failures, or policy. If you want an alert when an ad becomes disapproved, create a custom alert on Ad approval status. See Create a custom alert.
Google does not send email about these problems:
- A budget that runs out too fast.
- Conversion tracking that stops on an account that still spends.
- Search terms that spend money and do not convert.
- Impression share that a campaign loses to its budget.
- A drop in CTR or conversion rate against the campaign's own history.
Hero Marketer alerts cover these problems.
Alert thresholds scale with your account
$50 of wasted spend is small if you spend $20,000 a month. It is large if you spend $300 a month. So most alert thresholds are ratios of your own numbers, not fixed dollar amounts.
In the 06:00 check, Hero Marketer calculates your account's average daily spend from the last 35 days. It also calculates each campaign's cost per conversion and cost per click from the last 35 days. Then it compares the alert rules with these numbers.
For example, Campaign spending without converting fires when a campaign has zero conversions in 7 days, and its spend is high. The spend must be at least the larger of two amounts: 3 times the campaign's own cost per conversion, or 80% of its typical weekly spend. This rule does not use a fixed dollar amount.
Many rules also have a fixed minimum, for example $15 for a search term. The minimums apply to every account, at all times. So a very small amount of spend does not fire an alert.
You can change the main thresholds of most alert types. See Configure alert preferences.
What to do when you get an alert
An alert shows the problem. Hero AI helps you find the cause. Click an alert to open it in a drawer. The main button is Analyze with Hero AI. Click Analyze with Hero AI. Hero AI opens a new chat and sends the question at once. This uses credits like any Hero AI question. The question has the alert details and asks Hero AI to recommend next steps.
For a Google Ads connection broken alert, the main button is Go to connections. Hero AI cannot read an account when its connection is broken. For the full procedure, see Acting on an alert.
When alerts resolve
Most alerts resolve when the rule no longer finds the condition. For example, a campaign spends without converting, and then it gets a conversion. The next 06:00 check resolves the alert. The drawer then shows a Resolved badge. Hero Marketer does not send an email when an alert resolves.
A resolved alert does not always mean that the problem is fixed. Some alerts resolve the next morning, also if nothing changed:
- Responsive search ad got weaker
- Keyword Quality Score dropping
- Account changed outside Hero Marketer
- Custom alerts on Ad approval status
Daily budget running out too fast resolves at about 16:00 on the same day, at the default settings.
You can also mark an alert resolved yourself, in the drawer or in bulk in the inbox. If the rule still finds the problem, the alert comes back. An alert is active or resolved. There is no read or unread state. See Acting on an alert.