Google is tightening compliance ahead of the EU’s new political advertising regulation, which takes effect in October.
Starting Sept. 3, enforcements in the Google Ads API and Google Ads scripts will require advertisers to self-declare whether campaigns contain EU political ads – or risk failed API calls and blocked campaign updates.
Why we care. Advertisers running campaigns in the EU need to update their workflows now, or they could face disruptions in campaign creation, targeting changes, and experiment scheduling.
What’s new:
A new campaign field – contains_eu_political_advertising – is now supported in API versions v19.2, v20.1, and v21.
Values include: CONTAINS_EU_POLITICAL_ADVERTISING, DOES_NOT_CONTAIN_EU_POLITICAL_ADVERTISING, and UNSPECIFIED.
From Sept. 3, creating or updating campaigns without this declaration will trigger errors in both the API and Ads scripts.
Targeting changes, proximity/location edits, and experiment scheduling will also fail if the declaration is missing.
The enforcement timeline:
Sept. 3: API and scripts begin blocking campaign creation or targeting updates without self-declaration.
Sept. 22: Any campaign declared as containing EU political ads will stop serving in the EU.
Bottom line. Advertisers using the Google Ads API or scripts must implement the new self-declaration field before Sept. 3 to avoid campaign disruptions. Any campaign marked as political will automatically be blocked from serving in the EU later in the month.