Google Bans Programmatic Proxies in Updated Developer Policies

Google recently updated its Google Ads Developer Policies to prohibit programmatic proxies and require every integration to connect directly to its services through a dedicated Google Cloud project.

This change affects developers who build reporting dashboards, bid management tools, and AI assistants that read or manage Google Ads accounts on behalf of clients. As of August 31, any tool built this way must register its own Google Cloud project and connect directly, or it risks losing access under the policy.

The update is intended to support developers in building robust, high-quality integrations as new AI capabilities continue to shape the advertising industry, according to Google. The rebranding of the policy from Google Ads API Policy to Google Ads Developer Policies reflects an expanded scope that now explicitly covers Model Context Protocol servers and traditional Google Ads API.

Google's Help Center defines a programmatic proxy as 'a third-party hosted interface, secondary Application Programming Interface (API), wrapper service, Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, proxy endpoint, or any similar service that solely replicates, wraps, or re-exposes Google Ads programmatic capabilities as an intermediate layer.'

The policy change is meant to address security vulnerability exposure and operational risks. Using unaudited proxies can provide unauthorized actors access to your account, introduce the risk of cross-tenant data leaks, throttle throughput, cause latency across all users, and require enforcement across all users of a proxy when mitigating localized Denial of Service (DoS).