Upcoming Google updates on Healthcare and Medicines policy

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Come October 10, 2023, digital marketers should be aware of two significant updates that Google will be introducing to its Healthcare and medicines policy:

  1. Refinement of Prescription Drug Sale Policy: Google aims to enhance clarity by updating the title and language of its Prescription drug sale policy. Importantly, this change won’t affect how Google enforces the policy.
  2. Modification for Telemedicine in France: The specifics regarding the Healthcare and medicines policy for France will undergo a change, allowing telemedicine providers, certified by LegitScript, to advertise their services in France.

The revised language on the Healthcare and medicines policy page will read as follows:

Prescription Drug Services Overview:
Google maintains a strict approach to advertisements related to online prescription, dispensing, and sale of drugs. Businesses that fall under this include, among others, online pharmacies and telemedicine services.

The assessment of such advertisements will be based on various factors, from ad content, linked site or app, to the nature of services/products offered. In ensuring user safety, Google exercises utmost caution, especially for pages linking or referencing content that may facilitate online drug sale or prescription.

Eligible Countries for Promotion:
Only specific countries, including but not limited to Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Czechia, Denmark, France, and more, are eligible for promoting services tied to prescription drugs. For a detailed list and specifics, refer to the country-specific section of the Healthcare & Medicines policy.

Keyword Bidding:
Certified advertisers can bid on keywords with prescription drug terms in select countries like Australia, Austria, Canada, Czechia, and others.

Certification Process:
To advertise prescription drug services, advertisers must secure a certification from Google. The certification requirements, however, differ from one country to another. Ensure you’re familiar with the nuances of each country you’re targeting.

France’s Updated Policy on Telemedicine:

Product: Prescription Drug Services
Status: Allowed (with restrictions)

Telemedicine providers with a stamp of approval from LegitScript’s Healthcare Merchant Certification and Monitoring Program can now advertise their services in France. However, there’s a catch: ads, landing pages, and keywords must steer clear of promoting prescription drugs directly.

For more details on securing a LegitScript certification or Google certification, reach out to us!

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A Guide to Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 is the newest analytics platform that tracks and measures website performance. Explore the features of GA4 here.

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Google unveils 2 new customer acquisition and asset creation tools

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Two innovative tools launched during Google’s Search Ads Week, aimed at enabling advertisers to produce creatives more quickly and enhancing their overall performance.

  • Create new assets with Google’s AI 
  • New customer acquisition goals

Create new assets with Google’s AI

Google aims to assist advertisers in effectively reaching their target audience by providing them with a range of pertinent creative assets. As part of this effort, they have introduced a new feature called “automatically created assets,” which generates fresh ad components by utilizing an advertiser’s existing assets and landing page. This feature facilitates responsive search ads in showcasing the most effective combination of assets to potential customers.

Currently, the open beta for automatically generated assets is accessible to all English-speaking advertisers. Early adopters who have utilized this feature for headlines and descriptions have observed an average increase of 2% in conversions, with a comparable cost per conversion, for ad groups utilizing responsive search ads.

New improvements coming to assets. As part of this update, the following improvements will roll out in the coming weeks:

  • Ad Strength will take into account both automatically created assets and your existing assets when determining your rating.
  • Automatically created assets will use inputs you’ve provided such as your keywords to customize your headlines and improve their relevance to the query when it’s predicted to improve performance.
  • You’ll also be able to remove any automatically created assets that you’d prefer not to include in your ads.

Additional languages for automatically created assets will be launched later this year.

Connect with new customers on Search

Google has rolled out a new global customer acquisition objective for Search campaigns that leverages Smart Bidding and first-party data to optimize campaigns and attract new customers during peak periods. With the integration of this objective and bidding tactics such as Maximize conversion value with a target ROAS, advertisers can focus on and target high-value customers.

Early adoption

Several businesses have already employed this objective to connect with potential new customers. For instance, Baltic Born, a fashion retailer with an ambitious revenue growth objective, utilized the new customer acquisition goal for Search in conjunction with a target ROAS value-based bidding strategy to broaden their customer base beyond repeat customers in a fiercely competitive market. Consequently, they achieved a 73% surge in new customers and a 36% increase in revenue.

The new customer acquisition goal has two modes that help you to reach your campaign goals:

  • Value New Customer: Bid higher for new customers than for existing customers.
  • New Customers Only: Bid for new customers only.
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Google updates its gambling and games policy

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Google is set to start displaying advertisements for internet horse racing in Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. The company’s policy regarding gambling and games for the United States will be revised in February 2023.

Advertisers interested in promoting their online gambling content in the mentioned states must apply for approval. The certification application process will be open to all advertisers starting February 22, 2023.

Once the updated policy goes into effect, the gambling and games policy page will be updated accordingly.

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Google Ad Assets: Take back control

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It’s no secret that Google Ads can be the most valuable digital marketing tool for a business. The platform can help existing businesses achieve new levels of growth and exposure, as well as help new businesses establish a foothold in their industry. 

Google’s automated services can help you with some of the heavy lifting, but what if they turn against you? Despite their best intentions, Google Ads’ automated extensions can be disastrous for a company. If you’re taking the time to read this post or educate yourself on PPC, you probably want to be in charge of your account. 

Our marketing manager Sasha Brummer found and dealt with this frustrating case today.

Our most recent experience with automation

One of our client’s automated assets was directing visitors to dead landing pages. Google’s dynamic sitelink and callout assets used an old URL rather than the new one while continuing to charge for clicks.

If an ad directs a person to the incorrect link, it is unlikely that they will navigate to the correct one. This not only wastes money, but it also results in a loss of potential customers AND false advertisement. 

Luckily, we got hold of a great Google representative who was able to solve this problem and refund our client’s account some of the wasted spend. 

we turned off this asset, but Google showed it anyway after automated assets were activated

What are ad assets?

Google Ad assets are additional assets applied in real-time to your Search ad placements as they appear in results pages. 

They provide additional information to your ad viewers and aid in the development of your ads to provide the best audience experience possible—or so they say. The types of automated ad assets:

  1. Automated call: Include your business’s phone number
  2. Automated message assets allows customers to message your business
  3. Dynamic sitelinks: include links to website pages
  4. Dynamic structured snippets: can highlight specific aspects of your business
  5. Automated locations: shows your ads with your address
  6. Seller ratings: display a combination of ratings and reviews
  7. Dynamic callouts: shows relevant information about the products or services on your site

How they are automated?

Google applies these assets to your ads without your knowledge, making it unclear which algorithm or crawled data was used to create them. In addition, Google does not display any asset-specific information or metrics, nor do they give specific details about the automated assets. These automated assets may appear in place of the ones you created, giving you less control, which makes it impossible to optimize fully. 

How to opt out of automated ad extensions

If you decide not to use this feature, Google makes it difficult to find and disable the automated option. To disable the feature, take the following steps: 

  1. Sign into your Google Ads account.
  2. Click the Ads & Assets tab.
  3. Select Assets.
  4. Click More on the far right-hand side of the screen.
  5. Select Account-level automated assets.
  6. Click More.
  7. Select Advanced Settings.
  8. Choose an extension to turn off and select a reason (Google is requiring this).
  9. Repeat for each extension that you want to turn off.

Our recommendation

Don’t use Google Ads’ automated assets—we sure won’t be. We recommend taking the good ideas and creating the ads and assets yourself.

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Google account-level negative keywords are here

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Creating a negative keyword list for search terms that generate unwanted clicks or impressions in multiple campaigns can streamline the process of excluding those terms. By applying the list to relevant campaigns, you can avoid having to manually add the same negative keywords to each campaign and manage future changes more efficiently. This guide will explain the functionality of negative keyword lists.

How it works

Negative keyword lists allow you to exclude specific irrelevant terms from triggering your ads, thus ensuring that your ads reach your target audience more effectively and result in better conversions. As an example, if you own a sporting goods store that specializes in workout clothes, you can create a list of negative keywords that includes terms such as “dress pants” or “blouses” to prevent your ads from showing up in irrelevant searches.

Types of negative keywords

Account-level negative keywords

An account-level list of negative keywords in Google Ads will automatically apply to all search and shopping campaigns, allowing you to create a single, global list that applies across your entire account. This can be found and created in the “Account Settings” under the “Negative keywords” section. You can define which search terms are negative for your brand, and specify the match type like broad, exact, or phrase match. Each account has a limit of 1,000 negative keywords that can be excluded.

Campaign-level negative keyword lists

Creating a negative keyword list involves identifying words that should not trigger your ads. You can use the search terms report to gather ideas and organize them into themes such as products or services. Each list can contain up to 5,000 negative keywords and you can have up to 20 lists in your account. Applying the list to multiple campaigns at once, and if you need to add a new negative keyword to those campaigns, you can simply add it to the list and it will be applied across all campaigns sharing the list.

Learn more. Read the full blog post on Google here.

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Google Optimize to sunset in September

Google is discontinuing its Optimize and Optimize 360 products on September 30, 2023, which may affect marketers’ ability to conduct A/B testing and optimize their website or app’s user experience. Google is encouraging marketers to familiarize themselves with the tools and features available in Google Analytics 4, as they are committed to moving A/B testing there.

The company is discontinuing Optimize in order to better serve customers by investing in solutions that provide more robust A/B testing capabilities and to meet the evolving needs and demands of their customers.

Access your data. You can still access your data. Be sure to download it from the Optimize user interface before September 30.

Learn more. Read the full announcement from Google here.

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