Google Ads announced it will automatically pause inactive ad groups. Google will pause ad groups created at least 13 months ago and have not had impressions in the past 13 months.
Google said this starts a week from today on March 11, 2024. It can take several weeks to roll out this change, "The rollout is expected to be complete for all production Google Ads accounts by April 30, 2024."
Google said this change is "being done to improve Google Ads experience for advertisers." Google added:
Advertisers who are affected by this change will be able to unpause ad groups if they still need them. However, we recommend that advertisers review their ad groups and only unpause the ones you expect to get impressions in the coming weeks. Unpaused ad groups will be automatically paused again if they don’t receive any impressions over the next 3 months.
Navah Hopkins added on LinkedIn wrote, "I am over the moon with this update! For years I have been begging brands to pause what's not working so budget efficiency can win the day. This is absolutely a net positive." She added this:
🔥 Google sets budgets at the campaign level. If you have too many ad groups (looking at you accounts with 10+), odds are your budget won't be able to support all of them.🔥 Ad groups with no impressions drag down the overall quality of the campaign. If you have too many keywords and ad groups doing nothing, that averages in bad data. Zero impressions is not the same as low search volume and it is confirmed low search volume keywords are not going to hurt you. However if you have an otherwise "worthy" keyword/ad group that's just not getting any action, it's going to average in bad data.
🔥 Pausing is not the same as removing. You can always get it back. Also, that the timeline is 13 months confirms this is looking at established accounts and factoring in seasonality.
A bit more clarity from Google:
Hey Greg, I get the thought, but this impacts Search ad groups that haven’t received impressions for over a year. We don't expect pausing ad groups that have been idle for at least 13 months to have a noticeable impact on Search campaign traffic or that it will change the mix…
— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) March 4, 2024
