A few weeks ago I received an email from Google suggesting that 1 or more of the ads in an AdWords account were disapproved. In looking at that account, I discovered that they were showing disapprovals for ads that had been deleted.
As anyone who works with Google knows, their notices can be somewhat ominous and sometimes suggest that upon any further disapproval that your account will be suspended.
Obviously concerned, I contacted them and was told that this notice was sent regarding ads that were disapproved in 2007.
Now, I'm no rocket scientist, but I think it's now 2009…almost 2010? Why in the world would I be getting this email for ads that had been disapproved 2 + years ago?
I dig further......
So these ads were in fact disapproved in 2007, and paused, where they sat until May 2009. In May 2009, they were deleted (well at least the best delete you can do in AdWords).
So here it is 5 months later and the ads were: paused 2 years ago, DELETED 5 months ago....why in the world would the policy team even be looking at these in a review process? They are gone, deleted, not active. Well here is the response I got:
…Thank you for your email. I understand that you are concerned about deleted ads resulting in a policy warning. Please be assured that our policy team and I understand completely that the ads from 2007 that violated policies were later deleted.
Our policy team reviews accounts based on past disapprovals: the fact that you paused and deleted the ads from 2007 does not erase the fact that the ads were submitted and violated policies in 2007.
If our policy team did not look at all disapprovals, and only looked at undeleted disapproved ads, then it would create a situation where advertisers could violate policies and effectively delete the fact that they violated any policies.
Our policy team will look at the full history of an account when issuing suspension warnings as well. The fact that two years have elapsed since the violation does not remove the policy violation from our policy team's consideration….
Never mind, that this was 2 years ago,
Never mind that the ads have since been deleted
Never mind that there have not been not other since then
Apparently any disapproval you may received, just sits out there…forever and at any time, paused, deleted or not, you can be forced to pay for past sins.
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