Why it happens
A remarketing or customer list on a sensitive campaign
A remarketing or customer list on a sensitive campaign
Running a health, debt or housing ad to your own audience lists is the most common trigger.
Ad or page copy that implies personal knowledge
Text like "Struggling with debt?" or "Recently diagnosed?" reads as targeting a sensitive status.
Housing, employment or credit in the US and Canada
These categories also restrict demographic targeting like age, gender and postal code.
How to fix it, step by step
Find the exact policy topic
Go to Campaigns, then Ads, and hover the Disapproved or Eligible (limited) label in the Status column. It names the policy and the part of the ad it applies to. Tools, then Troubleshooting, then Policy manager lists every affected ad in one place.
Remove your own audiences from the campaign
In the campaign or ad group, open Audiences and remove customer lists, remarketing lists, lookalike segments and audience expansion. Google's predefined segments can stay.
Or remove the sensitive references
Edit the ad and the landing page so they do not imply anything about the reader's health, finances or identity.
Resubmit or appeal
Saving an edited ad resubmits it for review. If you think the call was wrong, or the change was made outside the ad, open Policy manager, choose Appeal and pick Dispute decision or Made changes to comply with policy. Each ad gets 3 appeals, and only decisions from the last 6 months can be appealed from the account.
Steps checked against Google Ads policy help: Personalized advertising; Google Ads Help: Fix a disapproved ad or appeal a policy decision.
Sprites diagnoses this
Sprites diagnoses it
Sprites shows which ads the personalized advertising policy caught and which audiences sit on those campaigns.
What Sprites does
- Reads the policy status of your ads and lists every one flagged under personalized advertising.
- Lists the audiences attached to your campaigns, so the customer lists and remarketing lists behind the flag are visible.
- Rewrites ad copy that implies a sensitive status, once you approve.
What it doesn't do
- It does not change your landing page or file appeals.
Questions
What are sensitive interest categories in Google Ads?
Health, financial hardship, identity and belief, sexual interests, access to opportunities like housing, employment and credit, and a few others listed in the policy.
Can I still run remarketing for a health business?
Not for ads in a sensitive health category. Use Google's in-market and affinity segments or no audience targeting.
Why are my age and gender targeting options greyed out?
Housing, employment and credit ads in the US and Canada cannot target by age, gender, parental status or postal code.
Does this policy affect Search keywords?
Keywords are allowed. The restriction is on audiences built from personal data.
See where it breaks
Connect your accounts. Sprites reads them side by side and shows you exactly where the numbers split.