• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, September 23, 2022

Jonathan Kagan, vice president of search at search agency 9Rooftops, woke up Thursday morning to a "bunch of ad disapproval emails from Google for a reason known as 'Circumventing Systems.'" 

Google defines “circumventing systems” as “engaging in practices that circumvent or interfere with Google's advertising systems and processes, or attempts to do so.

Examples include cloaking, showing different content to certain users, including Google, than to other users, which aims at or results in interference with Google’s review systems. It also can hide or attempt to hide non-compliance with Google Ads policies, such as redirection to non-compliant content, or manipulating site content or restricting access to so many of your landing pages that it makes it difficult to meaningfully review your ad, site, or account.

Continuous outages and issues at Google are impacting ad performance, but it's not clear if Kagan's problem is related to another that Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin tweeted about the same day. 

Google became aware of an issue on Thursday that prevented ads from serving in certain circumstances, but it's not entirely clear if this problem that Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin tweeted about is related to the challenges that Jonathan Kagan, VP of search at 9Rooftops, experienced the same day.

“Google is aware of an internal issue impacting ads serving,” Marvin tweeted. “Our product and policy teams are actively working on a solution.”

Apparently, Google is aware of the bug Ginny tweeted about, and is working to solve the problem, but appeals Kagan made through the appeal system have failed, and the issue seems to be getting worse.

MediaPost reached out to Google for answers and will report back with any additional insight.