Shaun Elley posted a screenshot on Twitter of one of his ads in Google Ads showing a status of “eligible (limited) policy (past violation).” This seems to mean that an ad you once had was disapproved because of a past violation but now that ad is not longer disapproved because Google later decided to no longer disapprove such types of ads.

Here is the screenshot:

click for full size

Google doesn’t want to simply flip the ad on fully because you might not expect a past ad that was disapproved before would activate and thus use your budget. So Google limits how much it can show and notifies you in the console about this.

Here is how Google defines past violations “Google continuously re-reviews ads to ensure they conform with our policies. During the standard re-review process, our system may identify disapproved ads that no longer violate our policies. If your ad was disapproved for an extended period of time and our enforcement system later decides that the policy no longer applies, we may keep the ad disapproved and classify the ad as “Past Violation”. We do this to prevent you from unintentionally exhausting spend on old ads. In order to re-activate your ads, please follow the steps below.”

How do you fully re-activate these ads?

How to appeal policy decisions from the “Ads and extensions” table:

  • Select the ads you want to start serving.

  • From the menu at the top, select Edit.

  • Click Appeal.

    If any of the ads you selected aren’t eligible for appeal, you’ll see a message showing which ads aren’t eligible.

  • Under “Reason for appealing,” select Made changes to comply with policy.

  • Under “Appeal the following,” select which ads you want to appeal.

  • Click Submit.

How to appeal policy decisions from an ad’s “Status” column:

  • In the “Status” column of the ad you want to start serving, hover over the ad status, and click Appeal.

  • Under “Reason for appealing,” select Made changes to comply with policy.

  • Under “Appeal the following,” select which ads you want to appeal.

  • Click Submit.

This is an ad status many don’t see every day:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js