Google posted a new policy update for Google Ads saying it won’t allow personalization of ads for consumer finance in the United States or Canada starting on February 28, 2023. Google said you won’t be allowed to target to audiences based on gender, age, parental status, marital status, or ZIP code.

Google said the personal ads policy will be updated to say, “in the United States and Canada, the following sensitive interest categories cannot be targeted to audiences based on gender, age, parental status, marital status, or ZIP code.”

Google explained that this allows to “offers relating to credit or products or services related to credit lending, banking products and services, or certain financial planning and management services.”

Some examples include credit cards and loans including home loans, car loans, appliance loans, short-term loans, banking and checking accounts, debt management products.

Google will begin enforcing this new policy on February 28, 2024, and it may take approximately six weeks to ramp up to full enforcement, Google added. Violations of this new Google Ads policy will not lead to immediate account suspension without prior warning. A warning will be issued, at least seven days, prior to any suspension of your Google Ads account.

Google Ads did something similar for political ads and housing, employment, and credit ads.

“We’ve long had personalized ads policies that prohibit advertisers from targeting people on the basis of sensitive categories. This update strengthens our ongoing efforts to protect consumers, expanding our credit in personalized ads policy to additional consumer finance ad categories in the US and Canada,” a Google spokesperson told us.

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