This article was first published to displayadsdeepdive.com
The most common struggle among the PPC world, the one you’ll always find in every PPC community, forum, group chat, or any sort of communication method between PPCs, comes down to one particular question: Why did Google Ads shut down my account? And the answers to the said question may come in a bunch of different sizes and shapes.
As you may know, and if you don’t let me enlighten you, Google Ads’ policies are a very controversial issue because, sometimes, accounts that apparently fill up all of their requests happen to get shut down. And when you are facing this situation, life gets very very difficult given that you may have spent thousands of dollars on an account you can no longer access, without knowing what happened and with absolutely no human being to talk to.
With that in mind, it shouldn’t require the brightest of the minds to realize this one simple thing: You need a PPC specialist who knows their way around Google Ads. And this doesn’t only apply to formal knowledge about how to build a proper strategy or target the right audience, it’s more than that; This person needs to know every little tweak and turn about how to make sure they keep you clean and avoid every possible conflict with Google.
It’s not a surprise that Google Ads’ content restrictions keep getting stricter, but it’s also not a surprise that they are changing them everyday. The Display Ad world, and the advertising one in general, requires its experts to remain updated all the time. Maybe, until yesterday, certain content or certain strategy was all good to go, but today it’s not anymore, and if your PPC is unaware of that then there’s your first strike if you happen to get one instead of having your account immediately shut down, losing everything you had invested in it.
So, as a first highlight to stand out here, we have this general rule to apply whenever hiring a PPC: Make sure their expertise reaches the world of Google Ads policies, and that they keep that up every single day. You may think I’m being melodramatic here, but hey, this is your account, and the money, time, and effort invested in it, that I’m talking about.
So, one of the first thoughts that could cross your mind regarding this subject could be: “My campaign is about the most naive, non-controversial, neutral topic in the whole world, why would Google Ads ever think we are up for anything mischievous?” Well, because that’s how they are. In the name of being super careful, ethical, and ensuring privacy and safety, they have been paying more and more attention to everyone’s business and how well they comply with the rules.
So let’s say you are running a dating app that’s getting more and more users and it’s reaching its peak, so you believe it’s a great moment to launch a Display Ad campaign, and to do so you have to hire a PPC. This specialist shows up, he’s awesome and he’s been in the field for ages, except for the last two months when he paused to have an arm surgery and recover from it. This PPC rockstar and you start figuring out your new campaign strategy and developing ideas when he comes up with a breath-taking one: Why not make Ads about how easy it is to find sugar daddies/babies in our App, and how no one else is doing it like we are? And you believe that’s the most amazing idea you ever heard so you go ahead and launch it and then BAM: Email from Google Ads saying they banned your account due to a violation of their content policy. You didn’t know that they had recently banned any topic related to “having sexual or affectionate relationships with someone in exchange for any sort of compensation such as money, gifts, mentorship, among others”, did you? Well, neither did your PPC because probably he was in the hospital at the time Google Ads announced it.
I know this is a super-specific scenario, but so are Google Ads policies and you need to be careful. Even more, some products have their very own advertising restrictions. Examples would be radioactive materials, chemical products, medicines, among others. So, no matter how plain and non-controversial you believe your product is, there’s always a chance to blow it if you are not well informed.
However, if you are just a person who knows nothing about advertising and just wants to hire a PPC, then it’s not your responsibility to be informed about those topics. Of course, you can always do your research or find out more if you are curious, paranoid or just to double-check, but what’s the point of hiring a specialist if they won’t know everything there’s to know about the area they are specialized in? Or you know, at least about how to keep your account open and running.
So, to conclude, the bottom line here is pretty simple: Whenever hiring someone new, make sure this person knows perfectly well their way around Google Ads policies. If they make a mistake in targeting, wording, or any of those subjects, there’s always time to update them and tweak them in order to optimize the campaign’s performance. However, if their mistake is related to negligence revolving around Google Ads regulations, then you could be facing a very permanent, terminal problem: Having your account shut down due to a mistake that could have been absolutely prevented.
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