Nothing is wrong with your account. Google now requires finance advertisers to be verified before ads run, and the process is genuinely confusing. Most rejections come down to two things, and one whole category of advertiser is not allowed to apply at all.
No cost. A straight answer within one business day on which route applies to you.
Which country are you advertising in
The verification requirement exists in both countries and the process is nearly identical. What differs is what happens if you do not complete it, and that changes how urgent this is.
Since 30 August 2022, financial services ads cannot run in Australia without verification. Advertisers must demonstrate they are licensed by ASIC, and the requirement also covers categories of financial services that ASIC does not regulate.
This is a hard gate. Without it, the ads do not serve, and there is no partial state to work in while you sort it out.
Google's own wording is that at the moment, failure to complete New Zealand financial services verification will not lead to account pausing or suspension, but will restrict serving for ads related to in-scope financial services, or ads targeting users who appear to be seeking them.
Read that carefully. The account keeps running. The finance ads do not. In practice a New Zealand adviser or broker sees impressions collapse rather than an account go dark, which is why so many never connect it to verification at all.
The phrase to notice is at the moment. That is Google signalling a position it expects to change, and Australia is what it changed to there.
Not sure which state your account is actually in?
Get it reviewedBefore you submit anything
Brokers, resellers and affiliates are Approved Third Parties. Google is explicit that they do not initiate with G2RS at all. The licensed business whose products you promote has to submit on your behalf, using your domains and account IDs. If you are an authorised representative of an aggregator or operating under someone else's licence, this is almost certainly you, and no amount of resubmitting will fix it.
The information submitted has to match the relevant financial services registry exactly. A trading name instead of the legal entity, an abbreviated company type, an old registered address. Each of those is a rejection, and the rejection will not tell you which one.
Every domain and landing page the ads point to gets submitted, and once verified those are the only ones permitted. Each must be live, publicly reachable, and clearly connected to the licensed entity. A campaign-specific landing page on a separate domain is the one people forget.
Verification is per location. Advertising in Australia and New Zealand means two applications, with the relevant regulator's records for each.
If a submission has already been rejected, the reason is usually one of these four.
Get it reviewedHow this works
Questions about the verification you have been asked for and what has already been submitted. Answered within one business day with a read on whether the route is still open.
The notices and the documents already sent, rather than account access. What was submitted, in whose name, and how it was rejected.
What the legal entity name has to match, which document establishes it, and what has to be corrected before another attempt is spent.
Prepared and submitted once the documents genuinely match, then managed through to the decision.
Get it reviewed
What you were asked for, what you sent, and how many attempts have been spent are usually enough to tell you where you stand. No account access needed to answer these, and you get a reply within one business day.
Thanks — that's come through.
I'll come back to you shortly.
That didn't send. Something went wrong at our end, not yours.
Email me directly at rob@leftclick.co.nz and I'll pick it up from there.
A reply within one business day, from me. No cost, no obligation, and if it isn't worth pursuing you'll be told that plainly.
Prefer email? rob@leftclick.co.nz
Nineteen years in search marketing. Eight of them running my own agency, sold in 2021. Four years managing seven-figure United States advertising accounts in consumer credit, a category Google scrutinises hardest.
In that industry, compliance, suspensions, disapprovals and verification reviews are a frequent occurrence and a condition of operating.
You deal with me directly, from the first reply through to the decision.
Questions
No. Google decides. What can be committed to is an honest read on whether the route is still open, the specific reason the last attempt failed, and a submission that addresses it rather than repeating it.
For an authorised advertiser in New Zealand, three. Apply through G2RS, Google's external compliance partner, which returns a unique code. Complete Google's own advertiser verification if you have not already. Then give Google the G2RS code through their financial services verification form. Two separate verifications, and finishing one does not finish the other.
Usually not in the sense Google means. If you operate under an aggregator's licence or as an authorised representative, you are an Approved Third Party. You cannot apply yourself. The licensed entity submits for you, and Google only needs one of them to vouch for you even if you represent several.
Yes. Google defines an authorised representative as an admin of the Google Ads account or of the payments profile paying for the ads, and states this includes advertising agencies and other entities managing the account on your behalf. It does not make an agency the licence holder, but it does mean the paperwork can be handled for you.
G2RS states five calendar days or fewer for its part. Google's own advertiser verification review runs up to five business days, and in rare cases up to thirty. Start earlier than you think you need to.
Verification can need renewing, and Google may ask you to re-verify after significant account changes, particularly updates to the payments profile. It is routine rather than a sign of a problem. It is also worth knowing that verification can be revoked immediately if false information was provided, and that Google may act on adverse regulatory findings or direct complaints from other businesses.