Launched our construction company this spring, brought on the first three office team members July 13th. Roofing and siding as the cash engine while we establish ourselves with local commercial GCs for commercial siding.

July 16th - nut shot.

While building the foundation (website, CRM, estimating tool, accounting), I launched our first Google Ads campaigns. I've been around paid search since the beginning of Google, so I know my way around. Campaigns were rolling in leads. Had an old colleague with a paid search agency review them for efficiency. Gave them access via an MCC (master account for managing multiple clients). They suggested tweaks, but everything looked good.

On July 16th, got a notice that our Google Ads account was suspended. Digging in, the account had been hacked. My colleague reached out - their agency had been hacked, all 30 clients compromised. Google locked everything down, no funds spent. Crisis averted.

That was 18 days ago.

We've responded and reached out to Google at least twice a day, every day. Same auto response:

Thank you for reaching back and sharing your concerns.
Our specialist team has reviewed your account and confirmed that the security compromise originated at the higher MCC level, rather than within your individual account.
Because your account was linked to the compromised MCC at the time of the incident, it is currently locked into our secure review process. The security cleanup must be completed at the manager level first.
This action must be completed directly by an authorized, pre-compromise Sub-account or highest MCC administrator on the account.
Due to privacy guidelines, we cannot disclose the specific email addresses that received the remediation notification. For any additional questions, we recommend reaching out to your highest MCC account administrator, as they are best positioned to provide any information available to them.
In the meantime, if you have any other questions, please feel free to reply to this email.

The MCC is getting no communication from Google either, locked out. They're bombarded by 30+ clients and basically unresponsive to us now.

We've added all other digital ads we'd planned: Bing, social, Front Porch Forum (quality version of NextDoor for Vermonters), print, radio. SEO is doing heavy lifting but we're only 4 months old, so limited. Google Ads is the 800 lb gorilla for service businesses.

We need leads. This is the meat of roofing season.

Starting a new account seems impossible - it would tie to our Google Business Profile, state license, and EIN.

I'm getting nowhere with Google. Reached out to a friend at a large agency spending $100Ms with Google, they're trying but not optimistic. Any ideas, connections, or shares would help. Reaching out to the universe hoping past good deeds come back around.