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Top 3 Reasons Google Ad Grants Accounts Are Cancelled

by Robert Coats on December 12, 2017

Understanding Why Your Google Ad Grants Account Was Suspended.

 

Over in the Google Ad Grants forum of the Official Google AdWords Community the #1 question I get asked by Ad Grants managers is “why was my Ad Grants account cancelled/suspended?” Primarily, the reason is because of a violation of one of (the many) AdWords policies or Ad Grants policies.  Any of these violations could result in a suspended account if not adhered to, however, the top 3 reasons why Ad Grants accounts are suspended are:

1) Violation of the  Active Account Policy 

This policy requires that you sign in to review performance at least once a month and that you make one or more changes to the account at least once every 90 days – these are the bare minimums and to get better results from your Ad Grants account, I certainly recommend active management above and beyond these minimums. If the account is a legacy Grantspro account, the requirements are even stricter.

The policy does also have a section on what to do if your Ad Grant account has been turned off which states the following:

If your account has been turned off because you haven’t met the requirements for active management, you can contact the AdWords team if you’d like to have the account turned back on. Once the account is reinstated, you’ll need to continue following the policies mentioned above.

If you find that you and your organization do not have the time to effectively manage your Ad Grants account and it has been cancelled because of this policy, you may want to consider hiring a 3rd-party agency that provides Google Ad Grants management to manage the account for you. By hiring an agency to manage the account for you, this ensures that the account will receive the level of management required to keep the account within the guidelines of the Active Account Management policy. Further, if the 3rd-party agency is experienced with managing and optimizing Ad Grant accounts then you are more likely to get better results from your Ad Grants advertising, allowing your organization to better achieve its mission.

2) Violation of the Mission-based campaigns policy

This policy states (in part):

The ads and keywords in your AdWords account must reflect the mission of your nonprofit organization and be relevant to your nonprofit’s programs and services.

Strictly commercial advertising is not allowed. If you intend to promote products or services, the sales and/or proceeds must directly support the nonprofit.

This policy violation often happens when the account manger is trying to go after every keyword that might possibly generate traffic even if it is related to the mission of the organization or not. Simply generating irrelevant traffic to the organization’s website, just to spend the full amount of the $10,000 per month grant, is NOT how Google wants to see their grant money spent. Google wants to see effective account management focused on relevant keywords and ads.

3) Violating the Website Policy by promoting an unauthorized website. 

Any account found in violation of this policy is subject to automatic suspension without notification. The cause of this violation is unapproved websites being advertised within the Ad Grants account. Sometimes, an organization has more than one website they are wanting to promote, and this is allowed, as long as, that organization goes through the steps to get that additional website approved by Google first.

Occasionally, this violation is also triggered when the account has been compromised and a “bad actor” is running ads within the account. If this happens and you see ads within your account pointing to website that you or your organization did not create, the first step is re-secure your account. This Help Center page shows you how to reset your password.

If you believe a violation of the mission-based campaigns policy is the reason your account was cancelled, this too may be able to be fixed and have your account reinstated.  Next, use this form to request reactivation.  (Note, if your account has been compromised, then it will not be reactivated until after you have reset your password.)

Granted the above three are not the only reasons why accounts are suspended but they are the most common. Google may reinstate the account if this is a first policy offense but repeated offenses can result in permanently disabled accounts.

Regardless of what led to the suspension of your Ad Grants account, once your account is reinstated, it is IMPORTANT that you abide by  AdWords policies or Ad Grants policies. Kinsey Street Online Marketing can help you do just that.

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