Investigating Google Ads Disapprovals with Policy Manager

Ad disapprovals are an inevitable part of a PPC manager’s life, whether due to a faulty landing page or unintentional use of trademarked terms. Thankfully, Google Ads has made the process of reviewing disapprovals slightly easier by adding a Policy Manager section to the interface. Here, you can now view all policy issues in one place and quickly take action on them.

To access Policy Manager, click Tools from the black bar at the top of the Google Ads interface, and find Policy Manager under the Setup section of the menu. 

Note that at the time of writing this article, Policy Manager wasn’t available in all of our accounts. Google appears to be rolling this out on an individual account basis.

Now, you’ll see boxes showing specific policy violations, with the number of ads or extensions affected for each.

A “read the policy” link allows you to access more details. You’ll also see whether the violation caused outright disapproval or an Approved (limited) status. Also, note that the filters at the top will carry over from whatever filters you had selected in the interface before going to Policy Manager.

Next, you can click the number in blue or “View Ads”/”View Extensions” to see all ads or extensions affected in the account. From there, you can make any necessary edits for compliance, or contact support if the policy violation appears to have been falsely flagged. 

Once on the main Ads screen, you can mouse over an individual ad’s status to get more precise details on a disapproval. You can also request to resubmit for review if you believe nothing is wrong.

While, unfortunately, the Policy Manager likely won’t stop arbitrary ad disapproval issues from happening, this new tool does improve the process of looking at approval issues across the account and assessing why. I’m glad to have this section available in the interface and will certainly be making use of it.

Have you used the Policy Manager? What are your thoughts on it, and what other features would you like to see? Let us know in the comments below!