Throughout this week we have covered the various changes that are happening to Google’s Shopping feeds and Adword policies.
The policy change on Dangerous Products and Services has caused much outrage online amongst those that will be affected. In some extreme cases, businesses such as those in the paintball industry fear the worst for the future if denied the ability to advertise on Google.
As teclan have digital marketing clients that may be subject to these changes, we have discussed with Google the possible impact and alternatives. Thankfully the news has been positive; the main focus in determining a product’s suitability for Adwords seems to be how a product is represented for sale. In the case of a knife for example, hunting and fighting knives marketed as useful for killing (animals or otherwise) are not acceptable while carving knives or dinner knives marketed as stylish household items would be most likely fine.
Basically if the product promoted has the potential to do harm and is presented that way, it is highly likely that Google will reject your ads. Sporting weapons like bows are a grey area and although Google’s new policies seem more restrictive in this area than they were before, it seems from their responses that the approach you take to selling the product will affect how your ads are judged by Google.
If there is no way around them, there are other advertising alternatives such as Facebook or other Social Media advertising and alternative ad networks such as Bing, which is gaining some market share as the default search engine for new Microsoft Windows products.