Google Ads Housing Policy Update – Here’s What You Need to Know

As announced in August 2020, a new Google Ads Housing Policy, affecting accounts for real estate investors and agents, will change service policies on October 19th, 2020.

Carrot members have started to receive emails and notifications within their accounts with this “Update to Personalized advertising policies: Housing, employment, and credit” title.

We wanted to get the jump on the potential changes you’ll be facing and the mindset leading into October.

This is a pretty significant change for Google Ads. Following Facebook’s move to special ad categories in 2019, Google presents its housing policies.

The New Rules

• Potentially impacted members will receive notifications in their Google Ads account, prompting them to acknowledge the housing policy changes and to agree to comply with relevant local laws. If you had not acknowledged these changes when the policy was enacted on October 19, accounts cannot create any new campaigns until they click to accept the changes.
• Additionally, when the policy goes into effect, real estate advertisers will no longer be able to target audiences based on gender, age, parental status, marital status, or ZIP code. Any existing campaigns targeting newly restricted audiences will no longer be eligible to serve.

For more information about the policy and how to acknowledge the changes in your account, you can refer to the upcoming policy for housing on the Personalized ads page or on the Google FAQ page.

What This Means for Real Estate Agents and Investors

Advertisers will need to update their campaigns before this policy goes into effect to ensure they aren’t negatively impacted.

It will be determined how this policy affects accounts, but early indications are:

• Zip Code targeting will no longer be available
• Zip Code exclusions will no longer be available
• Demographic exclusions will no longer be available

Some of the restrictions advertisers can use for excluding certain audiences based on age or income might also be affected. If you’re currently excluding specific income levels or ages, be aware that you might need to remove those restrictions in October.

Some of those accounts are already seeing warnings.

What Should I Do Now?

For now, there isn’t anything to change unless you want to get ahead of the game. You can accept the policy and make the necessary changes to your targeting and/or demographics.

You’ll see a message in your account like this:

Changes to Consider Making Now

Zip Code Targeting/Excluding

If you’re currently using a zip code based targeting strategy, now might be the time to get a headstart. Removing your zip codes and moving into a town, city, or county strategy.

Here’s What We Recommend: As you make this move, think about taking advantage of the county or city-specific landing pages, as well as adjusting ad copy to match the new locations.

Age Exclusions

Accounts using age exclusions will also be affected. From what we know, this won’t be an option if you’re currently excluding such age groups as 18 to 24 or 25 to 34.

Here’s What We Recommend: We might find something different come October, but for now, there might be an opportunity to add more negative keywords, update ad copy, and utilize ad extensions to make it clear who your audience is.

Income Exclusions

There’s also a potential that Google won’t allow for income exclusions. Some accounts have excluded such income levels as “Top 10%” due to the level of houses.

Here’s What We Recommend: Again, you can focus more on the ad copy and utilizing your ad extensions to communicate the type of homes better you’re either willing to buy or sell. If you’re an investor with motivated seller campaigns, you can also take advantage of better images and niched copy on your real estate landing pages.

Moving Forward

We’ll continue to monitor these new policies and send updates as they become available.

For now, it’s essential to be aware of these changes. This at least gives you an idea of what changes will be coming and how your mindset might have to shift come October.

We won’t see the full impact until the new policy is implemented, but we can start adjusting both the ads and the website to further speak to the audience.