You can control the way we apply restrictions to each bidder's scanned creatives.
For insight on how reliably we can enforce policy and your protections after the creatives are scanned, you can review a policy and protections score.
About creative restrictions
You can choose to apply Google Ads policy and your protections to a bidding partner’s creatives.
- Google Ads policy covers prohibited content, prohibited practices, restricted content and features, and editorial and technical standards. This set of policies is enforced by default for Google Ads on its ad network, and is more restrictive than Google Platforms program policies. When this creative restriction is on, creatives that violate network policy will be blocked.
- Protections help you manage your brand and avoid competing advertisers' ads from appearing together. When this creative restriction is on, creatives blocked by your protections won’t serve.
Google Platforms program policies, included in the terms of your Google Ad Manager contract, are always applied and cover more general concerns, such as malware and illegal behavior.
Set creative restrictions
You can set restrictions for one or more bidders at a time.
Before changing the restriction settings, you can check the estimated revenue impact for each bidder for the next 7 days. Note that the amount shown is an estimate, and actual outcomes may vary.
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Click Delivery, and then Bidders.
- Click Authorized buyers or Open Bidding.
- Click a bidder's name, and then Creative settings.
- To check how changing the settings may impact the bidder’s revenue, next to "Estimated revenue impact of turning this filter on or off," review the amount.
- Next to "Filter creatives based on Google Ads policy," check the box to enable the restriction, or uncheck the box to disable it.
- Next to "Filter creatives based on your protections," check the box to enable the restriction, or uncheck the box to disable it.
Most protections are affected by this restriction. - Click Save.
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Click Delivery, and then Bidders.
- Click Authorized buyers or Open Bidding.
- Choose an option:
- To select multiple bidders, check the box next to their name.
- To select all bidders, check the box next to “Name.”
- Next to “Policy creative filtering,” click the dropdown
and select Apply network policy or Don’t apply network policy.
- Next to “Protections creative filtering,” click the dropdown
- To save your changes, click Confirm.
Default creative restrictions
For Authorized Buyers, "Filter creatives based on Google Ads policy" and "Filter creatives based on your protections" are enabled by default for those bidders, unless you update an individual bidder's setting.
For Open Bidding, "Filter creatives based on Google Ads policy" and "Filter creatives based on your protections" are disabled by default for those bidders, unless you update an individual bidder's setting.
What is the policy and protections score?
This score indicates how reliably we can enforce policy and your protections after the creatives are scanned. If our scan is unable to read the bidder’s creative code or the code gives us limited information, the policy and protections score is lowered. Note that the score is not publisher specific.
There are a few possibilities as to why a creative will fail to scan. For example, the bidder may have returned a blank ad, geo-fenced their creative, or didn’t send a creative at bid time. Work directly with your bidder to improve this score.
Protections and policies are only applied to creatives that we can successfully scan.
What protections are affected by “Filter creatives based on your protections”?
When you turn off this restriction for a bidder, the following protections are turned off:
- For Authorized Buyers, when “Filter creatives based on your protections” is off for a bidder, Inventory exclusions still apply.
- For Open Bidders, when “Filter creatives based on your protections” is on for a bidder, buyer blocks do not apply.
- Cookies and data uses always apply to all demand channels (Authorized Buyers, Open Bidders, and SDK Bidders) regardless of the creative restrictions setting.
Unified pricing rules always apply and are not affected by this control.
When do creative restrictions apply to my bidder?
Some bidders receive traffic in yield groups and outside of yield groups.
If you disable network policies or protections for a given authorized buyer, it will be disabled across all your inventory sent to that buyer, and individual authorized buyers will no longer appear in yield groups.
When multiple bidders are in the same yield group, the traffic to each bidder is determined by the individual bidder’s settings.
Can I review the estimated revenue impact of creative restrictions?
Yes. Next to “Estimated revenue impact of turning this on or off,” you can check the estimated amount for the next 7 days.
Note that "N/A" shows when we don't have enough data to estimate revenue impact. When enough data is available, the estimate will update automatically.
Report on creative restrictions
To help you identify where policies and protections were applied, we’ve added two new dimensions in Historical reports:
- Creative policies filtering
- Creative protections filtering
To report on these dimensions:
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Click Reporting, then Reports, and then New report.
- Set up your report as usual.
For instructions, go to Create a new report. - Under “Dimensions,” click Delivery and select Creative policies filtering and Creative protections filtering.
- Run your report.
