New Google policy of three warnings about checks and balances.

New Google policy of three warnings about checks and balances: -

• Learn what counts as a strike, how to eliminate strikes, how they add up over time, and the associated penalties.
• Google announced a 3-strike policy, which would effectively suspend ad accounts that have received repeated violations.
• The new policy was greeted with concern by advertisers, as the system incorrectly marks ad content as a policy violation quite often.
• There was speculation about the number of ad accounts that could receive undeserved suspensions.
• Google has some checks and balances to try to ensure that only accounts that have actually violated the policy are penalized.
• Let's take a look at what constitutes a strike, how to eliminate them, and how they add up.

Offence categories:

• These penalties only apply to three categories: Enabling Dishonest Behavior, Unapproved Substances, and Dangerous Products or Services.
• These are policies that monitor deceptive behaviour, hacking services, spyware, drugs, weapons, etc.
• Google plans to implement this program further in the future, but for now, the categories mentioned above are the only violations that will trigger strikes.
• There are other categories of violation (such as spoofing or misrepresentation) that already trigger immediate suspensions at the account level.

Appeal disapprovals:

• According to a Google source, wrongful violations that are successfully appealed will lead to the removal of the strike.
• If the business receives an ad content violation and can appeal it (without making any changes to the ad), they will not receive a warning, as the disapproval was not actually a violation.

Strikes and timing:

• The first incident will result in a warning.
• Advertisers will receive warnings.
• Each expires within 90 days.
• So if an advertiser gets a warning and then within 90 days they violate the same policy, they will get a warning.
• If more than 90 days have passed, they would get a warning and the process would start over.
• Regardless of when the warning occurred, if another violation occurred within 90 days of the first strike, they would receive a second strike that would result in a 7-day temporary suspension.
• Finally, if the violation was repeated within 90 days of the second notice (regardless of when the warning or first notice occurred), the account would be suspended for repeated policy violations.
• Note that if any of those warnings were successfully appealed for being incorrectly flagged for violation, the warning would be removed and not counted.