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Discovery campaigns combine audience targeting features and visually engaging formats to help you better personalize your ads within Google's feeds to inspire customer action. This article outlines the requirements your Discovery ad assets (headline, description, or image) must meet in order for your Discovery campaigns to serve.
Users 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 personalized feeds, Discovery ads must comply with all Google Ads and personalization policies. In addition, we will review each Discovery ad asset for compliance with the Discovery ads requirements listed below, which will take priority in the event there is conflict with the Google Ads and personalization policies. Discovery ads requirements are more restrictive than the ads requirements for other platforms and surfaces, meaning disapproved Discovery ad assets may continue to run on Google’s other properties.
Discovery ads requirements
Prohibited categories
Regulated goods
Assets that depict or reference regulated goods or substances, including (but not limited to) recreational drugs, tobacco, and alcohol.
Example:
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.
Example:
- Assets that depict or reference the above prohibited categories in a scene from a fictional work of entertainment (video game, TV-show, movie, etc.).
- 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 artifacts, or halloween costumes
Assets that depict cash sweepstakes or cash giveaways, including (but not limited to):
Cash rewards without legitimate user action
Paid surveys and questionnaires
- Cash sweepstakes or cash giveaways
Improper content
Assets that depict or reference racy or adult content including (but not limited to):
- Sexually suggestive content
- Unnecessarily focus on body parts
- Sexual merchandise and entertainment
Assets that depict invasive medical procedures
Example:
Assets that depict content that could cause discomfort, including (but not limited to) bodily fluids and waste
Negative events
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), or 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 behavioral 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, 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 encouragement of discrimination, against people based on their personal attributes.
Assets that promote actions that violate other platforms’ Terms and Conditions.
Examples:
- Assets that reference services including (but not limited to) funeral home, mortuary, cemetery, mausoleum, memorial services companies, family and divorce services (attorney/law offices/counseling), 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, movie, etc.)
Dating-related prohibitions: users’ personal attributes
Assets that depict or reference dating services or matchmakers by asserting or implying user’s personal attributes, including (but not limited to) race, ethnic origin, nationality, religion, age or sexual orientation.
Implied interactivity
Assets that feature visual elements that depict nonexistent functionality (such as a “play” button that cannot be clicked).
Assets that tease the user into clicking the advertisement with sensational language, misleading claims or intentionally withholding necessary information.
Example:
Assets that illustrate that someone is trying to contact or has matched with the user while advertising a dating site.
Example:
Unclear image
Blurry Images that are blurry or unclear.
Examples:
Images that are visually oddly skewed or shaped, morphed, upside-down, distastefully out of focus, color-inverted, excessively filtered, distorted, or contain watermarks.
Example:
Images that are critically cropped or contain even minimally cropped text overlay.
Example:
