Google's Pre-Holiday Glitch and Unexpected Promotions

You might have had an email telling you your Google Ad account was suspended and that your ads won't run. That's not what you want to hear with the holiday season pounding on your door, right? Don't worry. Your ads are running, although it might be a good idea to check just in case.


What happened was a boo-boo on Google's part. There was a technical glitch that sent these suspension notifications out to many advertisers, no doubt leaving some panic on the table.

Talk about bad timing.

On a positive (but weird) note, Google Merchant Center is automatically creating and applying promotions to some products this Black Friday holiday season.

This isn't a move to compensate for the technical snafu with those nasty suspended emails we mentioned earlier. Google has actually been doing this for a while now, but with all the holiday discounts, people are taking notice more than before.

How does it happen?

Google Merchant Center automatically creates product promotions by extracting eligible live promotions from a product's webpage. These promotions are automatically displayed in free product listings and Shopping ads on Google.

The automated promotions feed features are designed to help you automatically share your live promotions with Google without creating them in your Merchant Center account.

It's a pretty nifty feature, right?

Here's the clincher. The feature is currently only in a closed beta stage for merchants in the US. Not all websites and products are eligible for automated promotions.

So, the takeaway from all this is that your Google Ad Account probably hasn't been suspended (unless there it has), your ads are likely still running (check to be sure), and there's a cool new automatic promotions feature going on that not everybody currently has access to.

Happy holidays from Google.

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