Google Ads is no longer allowing ads in its search network and other ad networks for products or services that promote speculative and/or experimental medical treatments.
This includes Stem cell therapy, cellular (non-stem) therapy, gene therapy, and similar forms of regenerative medicine, platelet-rich plasma, biohacking, do-it-yourself (DIY) genetic engineering products, and gene therapy kits. Google updated its health and medicine ad policy last week to say that starting in October 2019 it will disallow such ads.
They had a statement saying, “we have seen a rise in bad actors attempting to take advantage of individuals by offering untested, deceptive treatments. Often times, these treatments can lead to dangerous health outcomes and we feel they have no place on our platforms.”
It’s good to see Google take a stance against something like this
This month, Google will be reorganizing and standardizing publisher content policies.
The means Google will be dividing its content policies into two different categories: Google Publisher Policies and Google Publisher Restrictions.
The advertising giant will use the Publisher Policies will outline, in detail, the types of content that cannot be monetized, and use the Publisher Restrictions to specific type of content that do not violate advertising policies but are not necessarily appealing to all advertisers: “Publishers will not receive a policy violation for trying to monetize this content, but only some advertisers and advertising products will bid on it.”. This will include such topics as alcohol and tobacco.
This move is part of a trend we are seeing in the digital world. Consumers are wanting more and more transparency and from digital advertising and many brands and advertisers are wanting this from the advertising platforms themselves.
The previous set of standards and policies were not as clear as many advertisers would’ve wanted, thus Google wanted to simplify all of this by reworking and standardizing these policies so that advertisers are able to create and promote content that will allow for brand-safe environments in the digital world.
With all of that being said, it is worth noting that Google is not creating new content polices, just restructuring their existing policies.
YouTube Masthead ads hit YouTube TV app.
I want to specify, this is not for YouTube TV users, YouTube’s live TV service. This is for the YouTube app on TV’s.
For those that don’t know, the YouTube masthead ads are the big ads that show up on the home page of YouTube. It’s one of the few ads on the Google network that you can’t serve yourself. You have to reach out to a representative at YouTube to run mastheads. There is not much targeting available for YouTube mastheads. You can only target by countries. No demographics or audience segments. While there are no limitations to what mastheads can advertise, its usual movies, tv shows, and automobiles since it’s more of a brand awareness type of ad. Anyway, that is what a masthead is. So, if you have a YouTube app on your tv, they are now going to start popping up on your YouTube Home screen. Sometimes it’ll be a big banner, sometimes it might be a big video, but ready or not, they’re coming.