Google Ads Housing Policy Update – Here’s What You Need to Know
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 arenât negatively impacted. It will be determined how this policy affects accounts, but early indications are: 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.