Google has many policies for advertisers that are meant to protect users. These policies are especially prevalent in more regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services, insurance, and many more. It takes a super-savvy marketer to understand how to navigate these policies while still running effective advertising efforts.

While there have been many restrictions running Google ads for years, they have recently announced some even tighter ones around financial services. Prior to the newest set of restrictions, financial services organizations could not target by gender, age, parental status, marital status, or zip codes for loan-based products (car loans, mortgages, etc.). Now, Google is extending those targeting restrictions to other banking products and services such as banking and checking accounts. This presents an interesting challenge because while, as marketers, we aim to utilize more personalized marketing and advanced targeting to reach the most relevant audience, Google’s privacy policies are making that even more difficult.

Here’s a breakdown of what you can and can’t do within Google Ads as it relates to banking and other financial services:

What can be done on Google:

• Run ads for financial products utilizing only city, radiuses, etc. targeting as long as it is not by zip codes, for example.

What cannot be done on Google:

• Target specific gender, age, parental status, marital status, or zip codes for banking-related products (car loans, mortgages, CDs, checking accounts, etc.). This has been in place for loan-related products but is new for checking account-related products.
  • The most common use cases are banks and credit unions wanting to target specific zip codes and age brackets, for example.
• Use the words “you” or “your” in the ads. This is considered “personalized.” Google may still allow the ad to run but its delivery would be limited as it won’t deliver to the available audience at its full potential like it would if it did not contain these words.

SilverTech offers alternative options for personalized ad campaigns. Contact our digital marketing experts to learn more about Google's ad restrictions and the options available to bolster your marketing efforts.