Ad Disapproved For PHONE_NUMBER_IN_AD_TEXT When Ad Does Not Have Phone Number

[Pete Lavetsky (AdWords API Guru)]

Good morning,

We have an EXPANDED_TEXT_AD that is marked as following:

policy_topic_entries : [type: PROHIBITEDtopic: "PHONE_NUMBER_IN_AD_TEXT"]

review_status : REVIEWED

approval_status : DISAPPROVED

The Ad looks like:

resource_name : customers/3722803595/adGroupAds/126284834587~526601161599

status : ENABLED

type : EXPANDED_TEXT_AD

headline_part1 : 2009 Toyota Corolla

headline_part2 : As Low As $12,216

headline_part3 : Contact Us For More Info

description : Hurry, Get Yours Before It's Gone. Check Out Photos, Features & Pricing Online.

description2 : We Offer Transparent Pricing, Quality Models & Flexible Financing Solutions. Call Us.

path1 : Toyota

path2 : Corolla

As you can see there's no phone number in the Ad.

On mutate we have attempted to add an ignorable policy topic as such:

  policy_validation_parameter {

    ignorable_policy_topics: "PHONE_NUMBER_IN_AD_TEXT"

  }

This results in a temporary change in the approval status:

review_status : REVIEW_IN_PROGRESS
approval_status : UNKNOWN

But that eventually reverts back to:

policy_topic_entries : [type: PROHIBITEDtopic: "PHONE_NUMBER_IN_AD_TEXT"]
review_status : REVIEWED
approval_status : DISAPPROVED

How can we go about fixing this? Clearly the Ad does not have a phone number in it.

Is there a different PolicyValidationParameter we should be attaching? ( https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/reference/rpc/v8/PolicyValidationParameter )

Thanks

Pete

[AdWords API and Google Ads API Forum]

Reposting the last inquiry (https://groups.google.com/g/adwords-api/c/XTiXR6IXZlU) from the forum as it wasn't routed to our support queue.

Cheers,

Peter Laurence Oliquino

Google Ads API Team

[Pete Lavetsky (AdWords API Guru)]

Bump?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Pete,

I appreciate your patience to this concern. Allow me to provide support here.

Since there is no phone number associated to your ad, then the error should not encountered and policy exemption should not be used on this scenario. With this, so that our team could investigate why the issue is occurring, could you provide the complete request and response logs with request ID generated on your end where we can see the error?

Please provide the requested details via Reply privately to author option.

Regards,

Ernie John Blanca Tacata Google Ads API Team

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[Pete Lavetsky (AdWords API Guru)]

Ernie,

Sorry for the delay. The "Subscribe" on this thread doesn't seem to be working so I'm not getting notified on responses.

To be clear: we are not getting an error on the mutation of this Ad. I'm not trying to circumvent an error. We have a full resource name for this Ad. It exists at Google.

resource_name : customers/3722803595/adGroupAds/126284834587~526601161599

I only attempted to add the  policy_validation_parameter after we saw the Ad had been disapproved for:

policy_topic_entries : [type: PROHIBITEDtopic: "PHONE_NUMBER_IN_AD_TEXT"]
review_status : REVIEWED
approval_status : DISAPPROVED

So: there's no error to look into. There's only the need for Google's engineers to run this Ad through Google's internal "does it have a phone number in it" algorithm and see why there's a false hit.

To "see" the above disapproved information just do a select * from ad_group_ad where resource_name: "customers/3722803595/adGroupAds/126284834587~526601161599"

The Ad exists at Google. It's just not running because it's been disapproved for PHONE_NUMBER_IN_AD_TEXT that is a false positive.

Pete

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Pete,

Thank you for your follow up.

Regarding the subscribe issue, could you share additional information such as a screenshot of your subscription in the forum? This is so I can raise the issue to the rest of our team about you not getting notifications. You may send these details using the Reply privately to author option if it would contain your account or email information.

Moving forward, policy concerns and ad reviews are outside the scope of our API support team. What is implemented in the API should be the same rules applied in uploading ads via the UI. That said, if you would like more information on this matter, you can reach out to the Google Ads Product support team, via this link.

However, since you mentioned "I only attempted to add the  policy_validation_parameter", this is indeed the way to avoid immediate disapproval on your ads, by passing an exemption request via the API, specifically as described in this guide for ads. This way, your ads will first go through a review process before they are either approved or disapproved.

Best regards,

Peter Laurence Napa Oliquino Google Ads API Team

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[Pete Lavetsky (AdWords API Guru)]

Thanks Peter,

In this instance I'll have our team create a brand new identical Ad and we'll pass along the policy_validation_parameter on initial Add and see if the Ad gets approved.

The "Subscribe" feature started working after my last post so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Pete

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Pete,

Glad to hear that your Subscribe issue is resolved. Also, if you continue to encounter issues even when passing along the exemption request, you may reach out to our team once more and provide the earlier requested logs by my colleague Ernie, so our team can take a closer look.

Lastly, you may send those details privately or directly to our googleadsa...@google.com alias, if the Reply privately to author option is not available.