Overcoming Ad Policy Hurdles: How We Get Healthcare Ads Approved 

By Freya Smith, Digital Marketing Executive 

Despite being reputable and ethical brands, many companies in healthcare and medicine still face issues with advertising on digital platforms. From the website landing page to the ad copy and keywords, ad platforms can disapprove content that doesn’t meet specific regulatory requirements. The ads get rejected, the automated appeal fails, and the ad account can even be blocked. At Sciad, we help clients advertise their innovation effectively within platform rules, without compromising on ad performance. 

Why Ads Get Disapproved 

Google, Microsoft, and social media ad platforms have strict rules on what can and cannot be advertised. Google’s Healthcare and medicines policies, for instance, include rules about “restricted drug terms”, where the mention of certain pharmaceuticals within ad or landing page text can lead to a disapproval. Other policies require that ads only target users within some geographical areas and demographics. For example, LinkedIn’s Clinical trial recruitment ads policy states ads can only target users within the US who are over 18 years old and within certain healthcare professions. Certain styles of images that are relevant to healthcare also raise red flags to ad platforms’ policies, such as those featuring up-close skin or body parts. 

Navigating these policies can be especially challenging since what is and is not acceptable is not always straightforward. The rules often change based on location and ad platforms, and content that was approved once before may be blocked at a later time. Whether you’re advertising healthcare devices, drug development services, or medical research journals, your landing page, ad text, images, and keywords can trigger auto-review bots to disapprove ads – even when you’re not violating any policies. These bots often don’t understand the nuances within medicine and healthcare industries and disapprove ads simply due to the type of language or images used. This is where we come in. At Sciad, we’re well versed in what causes policy issues and are experts in avoiding and mitigating disapprovals when they occur. 

How Sciad Can Help 

When you partner with Sciad, we identify what aspects of your brand, product, or services may prove difficult to advertise. For every campaign, we’ll ensure the ad landing page, messaging, and graphics are compliant with your chosen platform’s rules to avoid issues from the start – before any time or money is wasted.  

Our combination of marketing expertise and scientific knowledge allows us to create policy-friendly ad copy and assets that still accurately communicate your innovation to potential customers. In tricky sectors where policy issues are bound to occur, we’ll liaise directly with ad platform support agents to provide the context needed to override disapprovals. Where appropriate, we can also help to secure certifications that provide policy exceptions for certain company types. 

Client win story 1 – Navigating Google’s Auto-Review Bot Disapprovals 

When advertising a range of research journals for a leading academic publisher, we encountered many instances of Google’s auto-review bots wrongly disapproving ad content. Google flagged ad copy related to “clinical research”, disapproved medical images used in journal covers, and rejected ad landing pages for mentions of drug terms within articles. 

To mitigate these issues, we dedicated time to consulting with Google ad support agents to clarify the nature of the ads and ensure many disapprovals were overturned. Once issues with certain content types were found, we devised work-around procedures with alternative ad graphics and landing pages to avoid disapprovals in the future. This allowed us to successfully manage the ad account with minimal impact on performance since any policy issues were solved swiftly or avoided altogether. 

Client win story 2 – Balancing Ad Policies and Messaging  

Rousselot provide gelatin and collagen solutions for diverse applications, including within the biomedical industry. We have applied our expertise surrounding healthcare-related advertising regulations when managing ad campaigns for Rousselot Biomedical on several platforms.  

Where language related to their products’ applications in drug delivery and cell therapy could trigger ad disapprovals, we instead use synonyms to accurately communicate the desired message whilst avoiding policy issues and lengthy appeal processes where the ads don’t run. 

With our in-house scientific understanding, we’re able to both understand and accurately communicate our clients’ offerings in a way that is both user and policy friendly. 

Fed up with disapproved ads? Leave it to Sciad. 

Are your ads constantly getting disapproved? Are you unsure how to navigate complicated policies? At Sciad, we specialise in running compliant, high-performing digital campaigns for healthcare and medical brands.  

Contact our digital marketing team.