There is a moment when an online store owner concludes: “my products simply cannot be advertised on Google.” Most people give up at that point — even though in a large share of cases Google’s “no” only means “not in this form”.
This case study follows a hunting equipment online store: it started with a 3x (300%) return on ad spend and a stream of disapproved products, and ended at 14x (1400%) ROAS — with the previously banned product category advertisable again.
About this case. A Hungarian e-commerce client, 2026. Figures are given as ratios rather than amounts: the monthly ad budget was unchanged throughout, so every change below comes from the work, not from more spend. Google Ads and Merchant Center policies referenced here are global, not country-specific.
The starting point: campaigns hitting a wall
When we took over the store’s Google Ads campaigns, three problems stood out.
Barely break-even returns. A 300% ROAS does not sound bad at first. But once cost of goods, shipping and operating costs are subtracted, that is typically the loss-making range in e-commerce.
Google kept killing the ads. Policy review classified several products — including the best-selling thermal imaging cameras — into a restricted category. And if it is precisely your most popular products you cannot advertise, the campaign has no chance.
A sense of hopelessness. The client could see that competitors somehow managed to advertise similar products, while his own attempts kept getting blocked. He had almost written the advertising channel off as unreachable for this market.
What we did differently
It did not take magic. It took the background work most people skip.
1. Product feed optimisation. Google Merchant Center decides which product violates policy based on the data in the feed. By rewriting product data, descriptions and categories accurately and in line with policy, we got the system to classify the products correctly.
2. Cleaning up the categories. A restriction is often not about the product itself, but about the product sitting in the wrong category, under the wrong name, or with an ambiguous description. We went through and fixed the entire structure item by item.
3. Navigating Google’s policies. Hunting and outdoor observation equipment is governed by its own rules. Those rules are not there to be circumvented — they are there to be known precisely: what can be advertised, in what form, with what targeting.
The results
Google approved the previously restricted products, and the thermal cameras are running in ads again. An entire product segment reopened, which brought an immediate revenue increase. And return on ad spend rose from 300% to 1400% — every unit of currency spent now generates fourteen in revenue.
The lesson: an unadvertisable product is rarely truly unadvertisable
Google Ads policy is strict, but it is predictable. The difference between failing and succeeding accounts is usually not the product — it is whether someone takes the trouble to align the feed, the categories and the policy requirements properly.
If Google keeps rejecting your products too, do not take no for an answer. Get in touch and we will review your account and tell you what can be advertised, and how.
Written by Endre Kovács, Google Ads and SEO specialist, managing director of Marketing Kalkulátor Kft.