Google rewrites its alcohol advertising policy, effective 30 September 2026

Google will update its alcohol advertising policy on 30 September 2026, a change Search Engine Roundtable reported on 28 August 2026. Google described the update as revising country-specific guidelines, expanding allowed advertising locations, and providing clearer detail on specific advertiser requirements and responsibilities.

This is a compliance deadline with roughly thirty days of notice, so the useful framing is not "what is interesting here" but "what has to be fixed before the end of September". Google published a preview of the new policy so advertisers can compare it against the current one, and emailed advertisers about the change. The report is on Search Engine Roundtable.

What changed structurally

According to the Search Engine Roundtable report of 28 August 2026, the old policy divided its rules mainly into two blocks, "Alcohol sales" and "Alcohol information", and left advertisers to work out where a given ad fell. The new policy instead lists explicitly what is allowed, and in doing so brings several previously grey-area categories inside the fence.

That structural shift matters more than any single clause. A policy that says what is prohibited leaves everything else in an ambiguous middle where an advertiser is guessing, and where a reviewer's interpretation decides an appeal. A policy that enumerates what is permitted narrows the guessing to a single question: is my ad on the list. If it is not, the safe assumption is that it is not allowed.

Mixers and accessories are now explicitly permitted

Two categories move from grey area to explicitly allowed under the policy taking effect on 30 September 2026.

Alcohol mixers are explicitly allowed, provided the ads target audiences above the legal purchase age. Alcohol accessories and specialised equipment are also now explicitly permitted, and Google gives examples: home brewing kits, distillation equipment, alcohol recipes, and instructions for making homemade spirits.

This is the one genuine loosening in the document. Anyone who has run ads for a tonic brand, a home brewing shop or a cocktail recipe site will recognise the position these categories were in, where an ad could run for months and then be disapproved after a review pass, with no clear clause to argue against. Being named in an allowed list is materially better than being unmentioned. If you paused a product line in this space because of past disapprovals, the preview is worth reading before 30 September to see whether the reason for pausing still stands.

The 0% alcohol application, and the suspension language

The highest-risk item in the whole document concerns alcohol-free products, which is not where most advertisers would look for it.

Advertisers wanting to promote 0% alcohol alternative beverages in countries where alcohol advertising is strictly prohibited, specifically Egypt, India and Indonesia, must complete a "0% alcohol advertising application". Google's new document warns that violations of the 0% alcohol promotion policy are considered egregious, and that violations can result in immediate account suspension without prior warning, permanently banning the advertiser.

Read that sequence again, because it is unusual. Most policy breaches in Google Ads produce a disapproved ad, then a warning, then an escalation, with the account left running throughout. Here the stated consequence skips to account level, arrives without notice, and is described as permanent. An advertiser selling a zero-alcohol beer into one of those three countries, perhaps as part of a broader multi-country campaign that nobody has reviewed at the country level in a year, is exposed to an account-level outcome for what looks on the surface like the least risky product in the category.

The practical implication for anyone running multi-market campaigns is a targeting audit rather than a creative audit. Pull the geo settings for every campaign that touches any alcohol-adjacent product, including the alcohol-free lines, and confirm which countries are actually receiving impressions. Location targeting that was set once and inherited through campaign copies is exactly how a market ends up in a campaign that nobody intended. If you are unsure how your account handles that, the fundamentals of campaign geo control sit inside standard Google Ads management work and should be checked before the deadline, not after a suspension.

Cannabis-infused and CBD drinks are pushed out of this policy

The new document explicitly addresses cannabis-infused and CBD beverages. It states that ads for drinks containing THC or other regulated substances, even when marketed as "alcohol-free" or as offering "alcohol-like effects", are out of scope of the alcohol policy and fall under the stricter Dangerous products or services policy.

This closes a reading that some advertisers had relied on. A drink positioned in the market as an adult alternative to alcohol, and described in its own marketing using alcohol language, does not get assessed as an alcohol product. The marketing framing is irrelevant to which policy applies; the contents decide. If any product in your feed or landing pages uses "alcohol-like effects" language while containing a regulated substance, the applicable rulebook changed and it is now the stricter one.

Creative rules are spelled out, not implied

Google's new document states that "Pregnant people shall never be shown consuming an alcoholic beverage" and that "Minors shall never be shown consuming an alcoholic beverage". Search Engine Roundtable notes the second clause makes clear that avoiding targeting minors is not enough; the ad creative content must also comply.

That distinction between targeting and creative is the part worth taking seriously, because most compliance processes in an ad account live in the targeting settings, where they are easy to check in a spreadsheet. Creative compliance lives in the asset library, in image assets uploaded by three different people over two years, in video assets that were cut from a brand film nobody in the performance team commissioned, and in dynamic asset combinations that no single person has watched end to end.

An asset audit before 30 September is tedious and unavoidable for any advertiser in this category. Every image and video asset in an alcohol campaign needs a human to look at who is holding the drink and who is drinking it, and that includes assets that have been running without incident for years, because the rule is now written in a policy that lists what is allowed rather than what is banned. The same discipline applies to any remarketing audience lists' creative, which is often older than the prospecting sets and less frequently refreshed.

ABV must appear on the landing page

Any drink with an alcohol content of 0.5% ABV or higher must now clearly show the ABV on the landing page. Google's document gives examples of countries with strict ABV limits for advertisements, where the highest ABV must be indicated on the landing page.

These three are the examples Search Engine Roundtable cited from the policy document; they are not presented as the full list, and no other country's limit is stated in the report. Treat the table as a signal of the type of rule that exists in the country-specific guidelines rather than as a complete reference, and read the preview for your own markets.

The 0.5% threshold deserves its own line of attention. It is low enough to catch products that a marketing team does not think of as alcoholic at all, including some low-alcohol and "near-zero" lines that sit right at the boundary. The requirement is a landing page requirement, not an ad copy requirement, which means the fix lives with whoever controls the product template on the website rather than with whoever writes the ads. On a large catalogue that is a development ticket, and thirty days is not a long runway for one. Landing page content of this kind sits at the join between paid media and site content, which is usually where compliance work falls between two teams.

One unified country table replaces the linked-out pages

Instead of linking out to separate pages so advertisers can work out where alcohol sales ads versus alcohol informational ads are allowed, the new document includes a unified table listing all allowable countries directly on the page. If a country is not on that list, advertising is not allowed.

The last sentence is the operative one. A unified table with a default-deny rule turns country eligibility from a research exercise into a lookup, and it also removes the ambiguity that a missing page or an outdated linked document used to create. It also means an advertiser can no longer assume that silence about a country implies permission.

What to do before 30 September 2026

1. Open Google's preview of the new policy alongside the current one and read them against each other. Google published the preview specifically so this comparison is possible, and it is the only way to see what changed for your particular product type.
2. Check every country you target against the unified country table on the new policy page. Anything not on the table is not allowed, so absence from the list is a decision, not a gap.
3. Audit landing pages for ABV disclosure on every product at 0.5% ABV or higher, and raise the development ticket now if the ABV is not already a visible field on the product template.
4. Audit creative assets against the pregnancy and minors rules, including old assets that have run without incident, and including assets that only appear inside dynamic combinations.
5. If you promote 0% alcohol alternatives anywhere near Egypt, India or Indonesia, resolve the "0% alcohol advertising application" question before the deadline rather than after, given the immediate-suspension language.
6. Check whether any product in the account contains THC or other regulated substances, because those ads now fall under the Dangerous products or services policy instead of this one.

What this means for Thai marketers

The Search Engine Roundtable report does not say what Thailand's status is under the new unified country table, and it should not be guessed at. Vietnam appears in the report as an ABV example at 5.5%, and no other Southeast Asian country's position is described. So the honest instruction for a Thai advertiser, or for any advertiser selling into Thailand from outside it, is to open the preview and check the unified table for Thailand directly. That check takes a few minutes and no summary of the policy, including this one, is a substitute for it.

The second point is a separation that is easy to blur. Thailand has its own national law governing alcohol advertising, and that law is a separate obligation from Google's platform policy. Platform approval is not legal clearance, and legal clearance does not oblige a platform to run an ad. An advertiser has to satisfy both, and the two are written by different bodies for different purposes. Nothing in the Search Engine Roundtable report characterises Thai law, and this article does not either; that question belongs with a Thai legal adviser, not with an ads policy summary.

For agencies and in-house teams running regional campaigns from Bangkok across several Southeast Asian markets, the practical exposure is the multi-country campaign whose location targeting has never been re-examined. That is the structure most likely to be carrying a country nobody consciously chose, and under a default-deny country table it is also the structure most likely to break on 30 September. Reviewing that structure is ordinary search campaign hygiene, and this deadline is a reason to do it on a schedule rather than after a disapproval.

What the report does not say

• It does not state Thailand's status under the unified country table, or list the table's contents.
• It does not give a complete list of countries with strict ABV limits. Iceland, Ecuador and Vietnam are given as examples.
• It does not describe how existing live ads will be handled at the transition on 30 September, or whether any grace period applies.
• It does not say what the "0% alcohol advertising application" asks for, how long it takes, or who reviews it.
• It does not describe any appeal route for an account suspended under the 0% alcohol clause.
• It does not give any figures on how many advertisers or campaigns are affected.

FAQ: what advertisers are asking

When does the new alcohol advertising policy take effect?

On 30 September 2026, according to Google, as reported by Search Engine Roundtable on 28 August 2026. Google published a preview of the new policy before that date so advertisers can compare it with the current version, and also emailed advertisers about the change.

Is alcohol advertising allowed in Thailand under the new policy?

The report does not say, and the answer has to come from the unified country table on the new policy page itself. That table lists all allowable countries directly on the page, and the rule is that if a country is not on the list, advertising is not allowed. Thailand also has its own national law on alcohol advertising, which is a separate obligation from Google's platform policy.

What happens if a 0% alcohol ad breaches the policy?

Google's new document says violations of the 0% alcohol promotion policy are considered egregious and can result in immediate account suspension without prior warning, permanently banning the advertiser. The application requirement applies to advertisers promoting 0% alcohol alternative beverages in countries where alcohol advertising is strictly prohibited, specifically Egypt, India and Indonesia.

Do the new creative rules apply to ads that are already running?

The report does not address how existing live ads are handled at the transition, so that is not stated by the source. What the policy does state is that pregnant people and minors shall never be shown consuming an alcoholic beverage, and that avoiding targeting minors is not sufficient on its own, which is a reason to review long-running assets rather than assume they are grandfathered.

Does the policy cover CBD or cannabis-infused drinks?

No. The new document states that drinks containing THC or other regulated substances fall outside this policy and under the stricter Dangerous products or services policy, even when they are marketed as "alcohol-free" or as offering "alcohol-like effects".

If your account touches any of these categories, the work between now and 30 September is a country check, a landing page check and an asset check, in that order. Relevant Audience can run that review with you and get the account clean before the policy changes underneath it.