Policy & compliance
Compliance
Compliance in search arbitrage means running ads, landing pages and traffic in a way that satisfies the feed's rules, the traffic source's rules and the law, all at once.
A search arbitrageur answers to three sets of rules at the same time. The search feed owner (usually Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, often through a feed provider) sets rules about queries, landers and traffic. The traffic source (Meta, TikTok, Taboola and others) sets rules about what the ad may say. And consumer and privacy law, such as the FTC Act and GDPR, sits above both.
Compliance is the daily work of staying inside all three: writing creatives that match the page, declaring them accurately in referrerAdCreative, collecting consent where required, avoiding restricted verticals and keeping out invalid traffic.
It is also a commercial matter, not just a legal one. A non-compliant campaign may earn well for a few weeks, then lose the money to a clawback or lose the whole feed to an feed suspension. Most serious operators therefore employ a compliance reviewer and keep written records of every creative and lander they run.
Think of it like this
Think of a food stall in a mall: it must satisfy the supplier's brand rules, the mall's tenancy rules and the health inspector. Passing two out of three still gets the stall closed.
Related terms
AFS program policies
AFS program policies are Google's rules for anyone showing its search ads on their own site, covering where queries come from, how ads are placed and what traffic is acceptable.
RSOC policies
RSOC policies are Google's rules for the related-search unit on content pages: real standalone content, honest search terms, honest upstream ads and a fully declared ad creative.
Policy violation
A policy violation is any breach of the rules set by a search feed or traffic source, from a misleading creative to non-compliant traffic or a wrongly declared parameter.
Feed suspension (account termination)
A feed suspension is when the search feed owner or feed provider stops serving ads to a publisher, pausing or permanently ending its ability to earn from that feed.
Ad review (ad approval)
Ad review is the check an advertising platform runs on each ad and its landing page before, and sometimes after, allowing it to be shown.
FTC Act (deceptive advertising)
The FTC Act is the US law that empowers the Federal Trade Commission to stop unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce, including deceptive advertising.