Google Cracks Down on Misrepresentation in Ads
In October 2025, Google will be updating the Google Ads Misrepresentation Policy concerning dishonest pricing practices to ensure greater transparency and prevent user deception. The following will be updated:
• Advertisers must clearly and conspicuously disclose the payment model or full expense that a user will bear before and after purchase.
• Pricing practices that create a false or misleading impression of the cost of a product or service, leading to inflated or unexpected charges are prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to:
◦ Bait-and-switch tactics: Deceptively advertising a product or service at an enticing, often unrealistic, low price to lure customers, with no genuine intent to sell it, only to pressure them into buying a different, typically more expensive or inferior alternative once they’re engaged.
◦ Price exploitation: Exploiting individuals in vulnerable situations or under duress; leveraging their immediate need or lack of reasonable alternatives to demand a payment significantly higher than the prevailing market rate. For example, a locksmith threatening to leave the customer unless a cost above what was quoted is paid on the spot.
◦ Promoting apps as free when a user must pay to install the app.
◦ Promoting a free trial without clearly stating the trial period or that the user will be automatically charged at the end of the trial.
They will begin enforcing the policy update on 28 October 2025, with full enforcement ramping up over approximately four weeks.
Google says violations of the policy are taken very seriously and considered egregious.
The penalties will be severe. Ads accounts found in violation of the policy will be suspended without prior warning on detection, and banned from advertising with Google Ads again.
Google’s Misrepresentation policy bans a wide range of deceptive practices such as scams, dishonest pricing, impersonation and phishing. Google says advertisers should review the policy and remove any ads which fall foul of this before the enforcement date.
