Event ticket resellers now must be certified by Google to advertise with Adwords

In a huge win for the live music scene, Google’s online advertising service AdWords has seen a major policy update in relation to how event ticket resellers can use the service.

AdWords allows advertisers to pay to display brief advertising copy, product listings and video content within the Google advertising network.

The latest update to Google’s ’other restricted business policy’ means that all event ticket resellers must be certified by Google before they will be allowed to advertise using AdWords.

To be certified resellers will be required to disclose to customers that they are a reseller, and not imply they are the primary or original provider.

Resellers will also need to disclose to customers that prices may be higher than the face value, and prices must also be broken down to show the values of included fees or taxes during checkout.

March 2018 will see a further update to Google’s policy, and after this time resellers will additionally need to post the face value of the ticket as well as their own price.