Policy Checks in v201809

[Dorian Kind]

Hi,

we're currently updating our frameworks from v201802 to v201809 and noticed something peculiar about the new version, namely that it allows us to upload ads containing policy violations where we were denied previously. We check the correct handling of certain policy violations in our test suite, and were surprised to see these tests fail because no policy violation error was returned.

As an example, any ads containing the word "cigar" in the ad copy caused a AdPolicyError.POLICY_ERROR to be returned in v201802, whereas in v201809 that same ad can be created just fine. I suppose it would later still be disapproved after review, but this is still a quite significant change in how policy violations are handled.

Interestingly enough, in the old Google Ads web interface it's also not possible to save an ad containing the word "cigar", while in the new interface no error is thrown and the text ad is created.

Is this expected behavior? If so, are there any recommendations how to test the correct handling of policy violations going forward?

Thanks and best regards,

Dorian

[Luis Xander Talag (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Dorian,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. In the AdWords API perspective, we're unsure if there were changes in the backend validation for both API (from old version to latest version) and UI (from old UI to new UI) with regards to handling of policy violations. I suggest to reach out to the product experts via the Google Ads Community forum about this as they are better equipped to provide you the right information you need. 

Thanks,

Luis

AdWords API Team

[Dorian Kind]

Hi Luis,

thanks for your response. I'll see if the product experts have some advice here.

Regarding the second part of my post, can you suggest any practices to test error handling? I seem to remember that a long time ago, when there was the Adwords API sandbox environment instead of test accounts, there used to be a mechanism to cause arbitrary API calls to return errors (by including some specific HTTP header), but I might be mistaken.

Best regards,

Dorian

[Luis Xander Talag (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Dorian,

You may refer to our Best Practices guide and Troubleshooting guide for suggestions on error handling in AdWords API.

Let me know if you have further clarifications.

Thanks,

Luis

AdWords API Team