Demand Gen product ad format requirements

All Demand Gen product ads must comply with our advertising policies and our Shopping ads policies. This article outlines the additional requirements that your products must meet to serve as a Demand Gen product ad.

Demand Gen and Shopping campaigns combine audience targeting features and visually engaging formats to help you better personalise your ads within Google's feeds to inspire customer action. This article outlines the requirements that Demand Gen product ad assets (headline, description or image) must meet for your Demand Gen and Shopping campaigns to serve.

Customers visit the YouTube Home and watch next feeds, Discover and the Gmail promotions and social tabs to browse and explore new content that aligns with their interests. To ensure that we provide a high-quality consumer ad experience on Google's personalised feeds, Demand Gen product ads must comply with all Google Ads and personalisation policies.

In addition, we'll review each Demand Gen product ad asset for compliance with the Demand Gen product ad requirements listed below, which will take priority in the event that there's conflict with the Google Ads and personalisation policies. Demand Gen product ad requirements may be more restrictive than the ad requirements for other platforms and surfaces, meaning that disapproved Demand Gen product ad assets may continue to run on Google's other properties.

Automated content policy decision

To ensure a good experience for the customer, we may conduct automated reviews of your campaign content. This preliminary review may trigger the restriction or suspension of the assets. If necessary, Google may further analyse the assets for a final decision.

Quality checks

Assets that do not meet Demand Gen product ad quality requirements

Examples:

• Clarity, correct spelling and the use of capitalisation and symbols
• Blurred, distorted or poorly cropped images

Demand Gen product ads must meet the Google Ads editorial standards.

Demand Gen product ad requirements

To assess any asset-level disapprovals in your account:

1. In your Merchant Center account, click Products from the navigation menu on the left.
2. Click All products.
   • Note: If you're using Merchant Center Next, clicking Products automatically redirects you to the 'All products' tab.
3. Locate your product on the page and check the 'Status' column of the table to view that product's current approval status.

Prohibited categories

Assets that depict or reference regulated goods or substances, including (but not limited to) recreational drugs, tobacco and alcohol

Assets that depict or reference images of weapons or criminality, including (but not limited to) guns, firearms, ammunition, explosives, the sale of fireworks, knives, prison, criminals or arrests

Allowed with limitations:

• Assets that depict or reference the above prohibited categories in a scene from a fictional work of entertainment (video game, TV show, film and more)
• Assets that depict or reference the above prohibited categories but not in a violent or criminal context, including (but not limited to) kitchen and utility knives, historical artefacts or halloween costumes

Assets that depict cash sweepstakes or cash giveaways, including (but not limited to):

• Cash rewards without legitimate customer action
• Paid surveys and questionnaires
• Cash sweepstakes or cash giveaways

Assets that depict or reference racy or adult content, including (but not limited to):

• Sexually suggestive content
• Unnecessary focus on body parts
• Sexual merchandise and entertainment

Assets that depict invasive medical procedures

Assets that depict content that could cause discomfort, including (but not limited to) bodily fluids and waste

Assets that depict negative life events, including (but not limited to):

• Divorce
• Breakups or family separation
• Home foreclosures
• Financial difficulties
• Accidents and personal injuries (non-exhaustive examples include sport, professional/work, medical and general accidents and injuries)
• Damage to objects or properties (non-exhaustive examples include vandalism or destroyed personal property)

Assets that depict or reference natural or man-made crises

Assets that depict or reference behavioural addiction recovery, including rehabilitation facilities and products that aid in addiction recovery

Assets that depict death or death-related content, including but not limited to:

• A dead person or animal
• A funeral home, mortuary, cemetery or mausoleum

Assets that depict trauma or pain, including (but not limited to) a person grieving or crying

Assets that depict content that is presented in a way that is likely to trigger a negative reaction

Assets that depict discrimination or the encouragement of discrimination against people based on their personal attributes

Assets that promote actions that violate other platforms' Terms and Conditions

Allowed with limitations:

• Assets that reference services, including (but not limited to) funeral home, mortuary, cemetery, mausoleum and memorial service companies, family and divorce services (lawyer/law offices/counselling), insurance or event support services, as long as they are neutrally and positively framed
• Assets that depict or reference the negative events listed above in a scene from a fictional work of entertainment (video game, TV show, film and others)

Assets that depict or reference dating services or matchmakers by asserting or implying users' personal attributes, including (but not limited to) race, ethnic origin, nationality, religion, age or sexual orientation

Assets that feature visual elements that depict non-existent functionality (such as a 'play' button that cannot be clicked)

Assets that tease the customer into clicking the advertisement with sensational language, misleading claims or intentional withholding of necessary information

Assets that illustrate that someone is trying to contact or has matched with the customer while advertising a dating site

Assets that contain selfie images for dating-related content

Blurry: Images that are blurry or unclear

Distorted: Images that are visually oddly skewed or shaped, morphed, upside down, distastefully out of focus, colour-inverted, excessively filtered, distorted or that contain watermarks

 Poorly cropped: Images that are critically cropped or contain even minimally cropped text overlay

Assets containing obscene or offensive language, including (but not limited to) profanity and sexual innuendos

Assets that use placeholder text, distasteful formatting, such as nonsensical punctuation or capitalisation, or incomplete sentences that don't use commonly accepted spelling or grammar in a way that makes the subject of the asset difficult to understand

 Assets that are longer than 10 words before a delimiter, including (but not limited to) full stop, colon, pipe, parenthesis, 'or', 'in', 'and', 'for' or 'by'

• Example: 'Straight leg 90s jeans blue denim side pockets high-waist ripped women's size S' 

Assets that contain excessive details like product codes, SKUs or part numbers that aren't part of the product name