Suspended $1M+ Spend Account - Google Ghosting Us

neonlights

Six years of clean history. Fortune 100 client. Seven-figure spend. Suspended out of the blue for 'unacceptable business practices'. No warning. no explanation. Just a rejection loop on appeals.

we've got a dedicated Google rep - actual US-based, not support bot land - but they've gone silent. No replies to emails weeks now. Stopped showing for scheduled meetings. So much for that partnership.

My best guess? Some automated flag thinks we're not authorised to run ads for the brand. But the system won't tell me what evidence I need to submit. Appeals keep getting bounced because I'm shooting blind.

This isn't just a ticket - it's a client relationship at risk. Lose them, lose my job. That's the immediate ROI of Google's zero-human-touch enforcement.

Someone in another thread asked if we had the client sign an Agency On Record doc - yes, that's done. Another suggested duplicate accounts sending traffic to the same domain. possible, but we've managed that before without issue.

If anyone from Google sees this: your AI black box is burning a high-value advertiser. A few million in ad spend means nothing when the system can't tell me what I've supposedly broken. Fix your appeals process or at least let a human look at the data.

jamesaso

six years of spend at that level and no direct line to your rep? that's hard to swallow. we push low seven figures monthly and I've got a dozen contacts at Google. unless your rep ghosted you because of some internal flag, something's off. Missing meetings and zero response from a rep whose comp is tied to your spend? doesn't happen. you sure the account isn't under some sort of review or got flagged for policy violations? That'd explain the silence

emailwiz

I've been through something similar - client of ours had a 5-figure account suspended overnight for "suspicious activity." Turned out we were running ads from our own Business Manager into their website, while they also had an old dormant account doing nothing. Meta saw two sources hitting the same domain and flagged the newer one.

You mentioned you're authorised to run ads for the brand - so are you running from your own account or campaigns, not theirs? Do they have an account too, even an old one? That duplication is often the trigger.

If not, what industry is this? Any recent changes to their website or landing pages? A redirect or a domain shift can sometimes set off the review bots.

buggedout

Running a Fortune 100 brand via an agency-managed account is a known risk factor. If Google can't pin down the exact chain between advertiser, billing entity, domains and account holder, the 'Unacceptable Business Practices' flag is often just a symptom - not the root cause. seen this pattern multiple times at scale. Verifiable ownership and clean entity separation are worth auditing before any spend ramps up.

storyweaver

Did you get the client to sign an AOR and actually send it to Google, or are we skipping that step again?

prpro

Open a standard support ticket first to learn what the issue is.

backlinker

All the other suggestions here are a waste of time, frankly. I've seen this exact scenario play out half a dozen times-high-spend accounts hitting an automated brick wall with zero human intervention.

The only reliable path to a decision-maker in the US is legal. Don't waste another day on chat support or the escalations team. Have your solicitor draft a demand letter addressed to Google's legal department, outlining the issue and giving them 14 calendar days to rectify it.

That's the guaranteed way to get eyes on the account from someone who actually has the authority to override whatever trigger got you suspended. Without it, you're just screaming into the void of a ticket queue that's probably routed through an outsourced centre with no power to fix anything.

pixelpusher

Lawyers and legal opinions? That's cute. For a Fortune 100 account with that kind of spend, you don't need a solicitor's letter-you need a direct line to someone at Meta who can actually override the automated system. The legal route works for crypto because they're already on thin ice, for a legit enterprise, it just signals you don't have the right internal contacts. Spend your retainer money on a decent agency rep instead.

neonlights

Activation rates? f*cked. That's the ROI you're getting from that rep right now: zero.

We had the same situation-Fortune 100 client, seven-figure annual spend, and then one rep goes dark. emails stop getting replies, bi-weekly syncs get ghosted. for a month. and the account basically runs itself at that scale, so you don't need hand-holding-until you need it. then you're dead in the water.

Tried reaching out to previous reps? Did that too. crickets.

Here's the part that drives me insane: that spend should buy you a dedicated escalation path, not a single point of failure. one person goes MIA and the whole machine stalls. No activation, no retention, no growth. Just a suspended account and a client asking where their pipeline went.

you're not the agency, you said-so you're eating the cost plus the reputational hit. That's the real metric nobody tracks.

emailwiz

I've been in that exact spot. Had a client with a six-figure monthly spend, rep ghosted me for weeks, then the account got slapped with a suspension out of nowhere. Turned out Google's system had flagged them as an affiliate operation because of some third-party tracking links in the landing pages. Google Ads hates affiliates - it's like they'd rather lose the revenue than risk a bad user experience. If your rep's dodging meetings, that's a red flag they either know the algorithm's already decided or they can't figure out the reason either. Might be worth auditing your site for anything affiliate-like that Google could sniff out.

prpro

What exactly did they say?

backlinker

the registered agent address is buried in the terms - most people miss it because Google doesn't exactly advertise it. That said, I'd strongly advise against handling the correspondence yourself unless you've got a legal background.

I've seen too many cases where a self-drafted appeal gets rejected on procedural grounds rather than merit. A lawyer who knows Google's enforcement policies can structure the response to address the specific policy violations cited, which is almost always more effective. Even a straightforward suspension like this - where the spend is seven figures - benefits from someone who understands the escalation path and can draft a proper statement of reconsideration.

if you're going the DIY route, at least mirror the exact language from the policies they claim were violated. that's where most people trip up.

neonlights

Six years, seven-figure spend, clean URLs - and they nuke you without a warning? That's not a policy violation, that's a broken activation funnel on Google's side. check your conversion tracking lag: if you're pulling attribution from a 30-day window but Google flagged a spike in click-to-conversion time, that can trip their "suspicious activity" model. ask your rep for the actual trigger metric - they'll usually give you the reason code if you push hard enough.