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This policy applies to all third parties that purchase or manage Google advertising on behalf of their customers.
Accountability is a core principle of Google advertising, and we want to make sure that advertisers – whether they work directly with Google or not – understand how Google advertising is performing for them and what to expect from their third-party partners. Likewise, we want to ensure that third parties – by virtue of their ability to purchase and manage advertising on behalf of their clients – understand that they have a valuable role to play in maintaining a healthy ads ecosystem. We want to strongly encourage third parties to promote this healthy ecosystem and discourage the enabling of significant or sustained policy violations.
Our third-party policy covers three areas:
- Transparency requirements: Information that you need to share with your customers
- Prohibited practices: Things that you can't do if you want to purchase or manage Google advertising on behalf of your customers
- Account setup requirements: How you need to arrange your customers' Google advertising accounts
In this article
Transparency requirements
For advertisers to fully realise the benefits of advertising on Google, they need to have the right information to make informed decisions. Therefore, we require all of our third-party partners to be transparent with information that affects these decisions. In addition to meeting the requirements outlined below, third parties must make reasonable efforts to provide their customers with other relevant information when requested.
Google advertising cost and performance
If the applicable advertising terms of service between you and Google require a monthly performance report for customers, you must include data on costs, clicks and impressions at the Google advertising account level. When sharing Google advertising cost data with customers, report the exact amount charged by Google, exclusive of any fees that you charge.
If you provide other reports on cost or performance beyond the minimum requirement described above, those reports also need to apply specifically to Google advertising products. For example, if you provide your customers with daily cost and performance reporting at the keyword level across all advertising networks, then you're also required to provide reporting on daily cost and performance specifically for Google Ads keywords.
Share your Google advertising cost and performance reports in a way that makes it easy for your customers to access the reports, such as by email or via your website. Alternatively, you can meet this reporting requirement by allowing your customers to sign in to their Google advertising accounts directly to access their cost and performance data. Learn how to share account access.
Management fees
Third parties often charge a management fee for the valuable services they provide, and end-advertisers should know if they are going to be charged these fees. If you charge a management fee (separate from the cost of Google Ads or AdWords Express), let customers know. At a minimum, inform new customers in writing before each first sale and disclose the existence of this fee on customer invoices.
Sharing the disclosure notice
It's especially important for advertisers with smaller budgets – who may not have the resources or expertise of large advertisers – to know what they can expect when working with a third-party partner. Therefore, all third parties that primarily serve customers with small to medium-sized budgets need to share the Advertiser guide: Working with third parties with all of their customers.
If 80% or more of your customers spend less than $1,000 USD (or local currency equivalent) per month on Google Ads or AdWords Express, you're required to share that disclosure notice with all customers who buy Google Ads or AdWords Express from you. Have a link to the disclosure notice in a clearly discoverable location on your website. Examples of acceptable locations include the footer of your homepage, the advertiser section of your site, your advertiser reporting dashboard and the products or services section of your site. In addition, during new sales or renewals, let your customers know about the presence of the disclosure notice on your website by either emailing them a soft copy or posting them a printed copy.
Google Ads or AdWords Express customer IDs
It's important for advertisers to have the ability to contact Google directly with concerns about a third-party partner. To allow Google to properly investigate and assist the advertiser, we require that you provide your customers with the customer IDs for their Google Ads or AdWords Express accounts when requested. Learn how to find an Google Ads customer ID or AdWords Express customer ID.
Prohibited practices
False, misleading or unrealistic claims
We want advertisers to make informed decisions about working with third-party partners, which means that you need to be upfront and truthful when describing your company, your services, the costs associated with those services and the results that advertisers can expect. Don't make false, misleading or unrealistic claims.
Examples
- Claiming a false affiliation with Google
- Guaranteeing top placement on Google
- Claiming that ads will appear in Google Search at all times
- Representing free Google products as pay-for-insertion products
- Making false statements about how Google Ads costs are calculated
- Offering unlimited clicks
Learn more about the Third-party false, misleading or unrealistic claims policy.
Harassing, abusive or untrustworthy behaviour
The service that advertisers get from a third-party partner should be just as great as when working directly with Google. So don't use harassing, abusive or untrustworthy tactics with potential or existing customers.
Examples
- Repeatedly cold-calling potential customers
- Putting undue pressure on an advertiser to sign up or stay with your agency
- Having others take Google certification exams on your behalf
- Phishing
- Offering Google Ads vouchers in exchange for payment
Learn more about the Harassing, abusive or untrustworthy behaviour policy.
Enabling significant or sustained policy violations
We rely on third-party partners to help uphold the integrity and safety of the advertising ecosystem. While third-party partners enjoy certain privileges, these come with some responsibility to ensure their clients and managed accounts adhere to all Google Ads policies.
This policy defines significant and sustained policy violations as a pattern of activity by a third-party partner that demonstrates a disregard for compliance with Google Ads policies, resulting in significant harm to users, Google or the advertising ecosystem.
Examples
- Misrepresenting identity: Providing false information during advertiser verification, such as providing false documentation during verification or verifying your customer’s account as your own.
- Consistently maintaining a high rate of policy-violating spend/accounts: Exhibiting a sustained pattern of activity where a significant portion of the third-party partner's managed spend or client accounts commit egregious policy violations and are subsequently suspended. This indicates a failure to implement proper vetting processes, monitor client activity or take corrective action against repeat offenders.
- Enabling circumvention of Google Ads systems: Actively promoting or engaging in practices designed to circumvent Google Ads' enforcement mechanisms.
Account setup requirements
One advertiser per account
Having a separate account for each end-advertiser is essential to maintaining the integrity of the Google Ads Quality Score. Because account history is a core component of the Google Ads Quality Score, mixing advertisers in one account can result in Quality Scores that inaccurately represent any one advertiser's performance. Additionally, we'll show only one ad per account for a particular keyword, so mixing advertisers in one account could unfairly limit ad serving for those advertisers. For these reasons, we require that you use a separate account for each end-advertiser that you manage.
About our policies
It's important that you familiarise yourself with and keep up to date on Google's third-party policy. If we believe that you are violating our policies, we may contact you to conduct a detailed review of your practices and request corrective action. In cases of repeated or serious violations, we may stop you from advertising with us and may contact your customers to notify them accordingly.
These policies are in addition to any existing terms and policies that may apply to third parties, including these:
Options to fix
Here’s what you can do if your site or app has been suspended for third-party policy violations.
- Read the policy above to learn about the behaviours that we don’t allow. Common reasons why you may have your site suspended are:
- Falsely claiming a Google third-party programme status, such as Google Partners. This could include hosting content that makes these claims or displaying a Google third-party programme badge that your company is not qualified to exhibit.
- Guaranteeing top ad placement in Google or selling unlimited clicks on your website.
- Fix the ad’s destination. If you can’t fix the ad’s destination, update the ad with a new destination that complies with this policy.
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Edit the ad. This will resubmit the ad and its destination for review. Most ads are reviewed within one working day, but some can take longer if they need a more complex review.
What happens if you violate policy
Compliance review: We may review your business for compliance with third-party policy at any time. If we contact you to request information related to compliance, you're required to respond in a timely manner and swiftly take any corrective action needed to comply with our policies. We may also contact your customers to verify compliance.
Notification of non-compliance: If we believe that you're violating third-party policy, we'll usually contact you to request corrective action. If you fail to make the requested corrections within the time period given, we may take enforcement action. We will identify the potential enforcement action or actions for continued non-compliance. In cases of serious or repeated violations, we may take action immediately and without notification.
Enforcement and penalties
Loss of privileges: Your access to specific features and privileges, such as Terms billing, API token use, ability to create accounts, use bulk verification may be subject to revocation immediately.
Third-party programme suspension: Your participation in Google third-party programmes, such as Google Partners, is predicated upon compliance with third-party policy and may be limited or suspended if we find that you're violating our policies or if you fail to cooperate with our efforts to review your business for compliance.
Advertising account suspension: We may suspend your Google advertising accounts if you enable significant or sustained policy violations. In cases of repeated or especially serious policy violations, your Google advertising accounts and your manager accounts may be permanently suspended and you may no longer be able to advertise with Google. Furthermore, we may contact your customers to notify them accordingly.
Report a violation of third-party policy
Do you think a third-party partner is violating this policy? Let us know: