Google Ads will Automatically Pause low-activity Keywords

Google will begin automatically pausing ad groups that have not served after a certain period of time to improve the Google Ads experience. This appears likely to simplify accounts, speed up account access, and allow advertisers to focus on the ad groups that generate results for their campaigns.

Starting in June 2024, Google will also begin automatically pausing low-activity keywords. Positive keywords in Search campaigns will be considered low activity if they were created more than 13 months ago and received zero impressions during the previous 13 months.

Why Is This Change Being Made?

Google states that it wants to help advertisers simplify their accounts and focus on the keywords that generate results. Overall, we can say that this change will make account management easier for both Google and advertising agencies.

If you decide that a paused keyword is necessary for your campaign, you can enable it again. However, Google strongly recommends re-enabling only the keywords that you believe will receive impressions in the coming weeks. Keywords that have been re-enabled will automatically be paused again if they do not receive any impressions during the following three months.

Navah Hopkins from Optmyzr shared the following thoughts on the subject:

I am very excited about this update! For years, I have been asking brands to pause the things that do not work so that they can improve budget efficiency. This is definitely a positive development for the following reasons:

🔥 Google sets budgets at the campaign level. If you have too many ad groups, particularly more than 10, your budget will probably not be able to support all of them.

🔥 Ad groups that receive no impressions reduce the overall quality of the campaign. If you have too many keywords and ad groups that do nothing, this creates poor-quality data. Zero impressions are not the same as low search volume, and it has been confirmed that low-search-volume keywords do not harm your account. However, if you have a supposedly valuable keyword or ad group that receives no activity, it will negatively affect your average data quality.

🔥 Pausing is not the same as removing. You can always reverse the action. In addition, the 13-month time frame confirms that Google is evaluating established accounts and taking seasonality into consideration.

What Do I Need to Change?

No code changes are required. However, Google Ads API developers may make changes to provide advertisers with greater transparency about why ad_group.status has been set to PAUSED. If you maintain local copies of Google Ads data in your database, you can keep them synchronised by querying the change history.

For all API versions, you can query the change_event resource using the following query to determine whether an ad group’s status has changed. If change_event.changed_fields includes the status field, it indicates an ad group that Google has paused.

Make sure to replace INSERT_YYYY-MMM-DD with your own date range.

SELECT ad_group.status, ad_group.resource_name, ad_group.name, 
ad_group.id, change_event.change_date_time, 
change_event.new_resource, change_event.old_resource, 
change_event.changed_fields, change_event.change_resource_type, 
change_event.user_email, change_event.ad_group 
FROM change_event 
WHERE change_event.user_email = 'Low activity system bulk change'  
AND change_event.change_resource_type = 'AD_GROUP' 
AND ad_group.status = 'PAUSED' 
AND change_event.change_date_time >= 'INSERT_YYYY-MMM-DD' 
AND change_event.change_date_time <= 'INSERT_YYYY-MMM-DD' 
ORDER BY change_event.change_date_time DESC LIMIT 50

A change event showing that an ad group was paused by Google will look similar to the following:

{
  "adGroup": {
    "resourceName": "customers/1234567890/adGroups/5432154321",
    "status": "PAUSED",
    "id": "5432154321",
    "name": "Your ad group name"
  },
  "changeEvent": {
    "resourceName": "customers/1234567890/changeEvents/1708648783892610~5~0",
    "changeDateTime": "2024-02-22 16:39:43.89261",
    "changeResourceType": "AD_GROUP",
    "userEmail": "Low activity system bulk change",
    "oldResource": {
      "adGroup": {
        "status": "ENABLED"
      }
    },
    "newResource": {
      "adGroup": {
        "status": "PAUSED"
      }
    },
    "changedFields": "status",
    "adGroup": "customers/1234567890/adGroups/5432154321"
  }
}

Starting with v16, the API will return the reason why the ad group was paused through new fields. You can update the change history query to include these fields.

You will still be able to update and modify your ad groups while they are paused. The rollout is expected to take slightly more than seven weeks and to be completed for all Google Ads accounts by 30 April.