Google Ads 3 Strike Bowling Automation

Google, the other week, announced a new simple Python script that lets advertisers with many keywords and ads simplify the tracking and removal of ad violations that might lead to more serious penalties with Google’s three strikes and you’re out policy.

Google Ads has instituted a new three-strikes and you’re out policy starting in September 2021 where Google can issue a warning and then up to three-strikes for violations of Google’s Enabling Dishonest Behavior, Unapproved Substances and Dangerous Products or Services policies. After the third strike, your account can be suspended.

So it didn’t happen in September, but it happened in October instead, by the way.

Google said “advertisers with hundreds of accounts and billions of search keywords lack the bandwidth to monitor each violation, thus might receive repeated strikes and get suspended.”

The “3 Strike Bowling” is an automated solution which identifies and gathers all relevant disapproved apps and includes the option to remove violating ads, in order to ensure compliance and avoid account suspension, Google said You can define an exclusion list of policy topics to ignore and not remove. Google said it is a “simple Python script, which can be run in either of the following modes:”

• “Audit Mode”- export all the disapproved ads without deleting them;
• “Remove Mode” – delete all the disapproved ads and log the disapproved ads’ details.

Google said it would take about two hours for a developer to implement, so it might be worth doing if you can avoid account suspension. You can learn more over here.

Forum discussion at Twitter.