If you’re new to Google AdWords, you will probably find yourself, at one time or another, frustrated or confused. There are so many working parts to AdWords, so many individual factors and options to consider. I recently ran into an issue that caused me much frustration, so I’m sharing what I learned about Approved (limited) ads here.
Background to my story
I had several AdWords campaigns running simultaneously. About half were running as expected, but the others could not have been performing worse. 0 impressions, 0 clicks. I contacted my Google AdWords account strategist for advice. He suggested that I wasn’t allocating enough of my budget to the poorly performing campaign. He believed that if I spread my budget out more evenly across all my campaigns, the poorly performing ones would be shown more frequently.
I made adjustments to all my campaign budgets, so that all campaigns had about the same money allocated to them. Then I waited. Periodically I would check the campaign to see what difference this change made to the performance of the ad. A few weeks went by and, still, there was no change. 0 impressions, 0 clicks.
I continued trouble-shooting. What was different about the campaigns that were performing well, as compared to those that were doing so poorly? Finally, I noticed that the individual ads in the campaigns that were not doing well were all approved but “limited.”
What is Google AdWords: approved (limited)
I clicked on the word “limited” and learned that An ad will be marked “Approved (limited)” when AdWords policies (common examples include Alcohol, Copyrights, Gambling, Healthcare, and Trademarks) prevent certain types of ads from showing in certain regions, to certain ages, or on certain devices. I was confused. What trademarked term was I using? I just wasn’t seeing it.
I immediately called Google AdWords at 866-2GOOGLE. The woman there explained that I had the word “Google” in the description of the poorly performing ads. The text read, “Mention promo code Google.”
Her advice was for me to fill out an AdWords Trademark Authorization form. She walked me through it. It only took about a minute. She suspected that I would probably get full authorization and, when that happened, the ad would start running. We hung up the phone, and a couple of seconds later I received an email stating “the Google Advertising Legal Support Team doesn’t handle permission requests for use of Google brands.”
From the email I learned that if I wanted to run the word “Google” in the ad, I would need to submit a different form, a brand permissions form. Rather than do that, I changed my text of my ad to “Mention the promo code AdWords.” I was still concerned that “AdWords” would be considered a trademarked phrase and my ad would again be Approved “Limited,” but within several hours the new ad was running.
The next step was for me to review all my ads. I changed all instances of “mention coupon code Google Ad” to “mention promo code “AdWords.” I have not had any issues since and all campaigns are performing as expected. If your ad includes the word Google, and you can’t find a satisfactory way to use another word, you should try using the Brand Permissions Form.
Google AdWords campaign management
If you’re ready to pass off the management of your Google AdWords account, we can handle it for you. Please call us at (518) 392-0846 or email [email protected]. Please let us know if you found this article helpful.