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Google Ads is Updating its Healthcare and Medicine Policy in 2025

A doctor holding a tablet with a patient, thematically related to recent updates by Google Ads for its Healthcare and Medicine policy

Google Ads regularly publishes updates and changes to its many policies. Some of these changes are minor or extremely specific with little effect on most advertisers. Others can be more serious, such as the recent updates by Google to its Healthcare and Medicines policy in July and August 2025. We’ll explain what these recent changes mean, who they affect, and what you may need to do.

What is Google Ad’s Update to its Healthcare and Medicines policy?

At the start of August 2025, Google published a notice that it would be updating its enforcement of the Google Ads Healthcare and Medicines policy. The update stated, “The Restricted Medical Content label, which enables eligible certified advertisers to target prescription drug keywords, will be deprecated.” This label was essential for any advertising products or services with ads that targeted prescription drug keywords.

The update means that Google Ads will no longer be using this label. However, ads targeting prescription drug keywords will still be permitted on the platform. Furthermore, since the label is being deprecated, advertisers will still see it as an available option. However, its deprecation means that Google won’t be internally looking at the label for enforcing its policies around Restricted Drug Terms. In summary, the update means advertisers will simply no longer need to use the “Restricted Medical Content” label on their ads targeting these prescription keywords. Instead, Google will now use its certification system to allow advertisers to target prescription drug keywords.

What is Google Ads’ Restricted Drug Term Personalization Certification?

In July 2025, Google launched a new certification application for advertisers in Canada, as well as the United States and New Zealand, who plan to use Google’s personalized targeting tools to advertise products or services that contain Restricted Drug Terms. Restricted Drug Terms are defined by Google as “prescription medications and information about prescription medications” excluding those that are not prone to abuse/misuse or are strictly for animals. These, by law, cannot normally be generally advertised for personal use. However, prescription medications can be advertised to healthcare professionals in their capacity as medical professionals.

This is where Google Ads’ personalization is potent, since it allows advertisers of these Restricted Drug Terms to specifically target medical professionals. Previously, Google relied on the label to enforce these restrictions. Instead, advertisers will now need to apply and obtain the Restricted Drug Term Personalization Certification. Once received, they can begin running campaigns with Restricted Drug Terms targeted at medical professionals.

Who is Affected by the Changes to Google Ads Medical and Healthcare policies?

The simple answer is anyone targeting restricted drug keywords, i.e. prescription drugs, on Google Ads is affected by the July and August updates. They need to apply for the certification whether they already have campaigns running on the platform or plan to in the coming months. It is best to apply as soon as possible to avoid any disruptions or delays in advertising campaigns on Google. Your marketing agency, like Rosewood Marketing, can apply on your behalf, but they will need a letter authorizing the application. This letter follows a specific format set by Google. Be sure to provide your marketing agency with this letter so that they can apply on your behalf and continue to manage and run your campaigns.

Staying Updated with Google Ads

Now you should have a better idea of the recent changes by Google Ads in its Healthcare and Medicines policy. As mentioned, we recommend applying for the Restricted Drug Term Personalization Certification as soon as possible or providing us with the letter so that we can apply on your behalf. If you’re interested in starting new Google Ads campaigns in this industry, contact our Google ads team, who will be more than happy to lend their expertise.

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Time to Talk Tracking: Is Your Website Measuring What Really Matters?

A woman on a laptop with Google Analytics looking at the various metrics a business' website is measuring.

A business’ website does more than provide information to visitors. It also offers a lot of valuable information about these visitors to the business. This can include users’ interests, preferences, and certain demographics, but often that valuable data is missed or even ignored. It’s time to talk about website tracking. We’ll explain which website metrics are important, why they are insightful, and some of the best tools for gathering and measuring that information.

Why Website Metrics are Important to Track

Websites can collect a lot of data about how many visitors come to a website, from where, what pages they visit, how long they stay, and more. These can be extremely informative for a business. They can provide insights into customer/client interests, how they are navigating to your website, whether an audience is growing or cycling, and even strengths or weaknesses about the website design itself. Measuring these important metrics can provide great insight about your website’s design, the products/services you offer, and where you should focus digital marketing efforts.

Important Website Metrics to Measure

There are countless data points a website can measure, but they are not all created equal. Some are more important to measure and track than others. For example, ‘views’ is a simple metric to see how many people are viewing a business’ website and specific pages. However, it’s not much more informative than this. We’ll explain some of the key measurements that all businesses should be tracking.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is uniformly one of the most important metrics to track on a website to measure engagement. It considers what percentage of visitors to a business’ website convert, i.e. perform some kind of action. There are different kinds of conversions and yours will depend on the website and business. Conversion rate may consider completing purchases or booking appointments/service, but they can also be filling in a digital form, signing up to a newsletter or trial, or downloading content. All of these can be extremely informative about what is attracting visitors’ attentions and interests.

Event Tracking and Other Behaviour Measurements

Another important metric for measuring website visitor engagement is event tracking. Events can include conversions, but they also include other actions taken on a website. Event tracking can monitor users clicking on certain buttons or images, playing videos, opening a gallery, etc. All of this can provide important data for what parts of a website are attracting more attention, getting more conversions, and more. That can help a business know where to focus its service/product offerings and inform web designers about future revisions to the site’s layout.

Other event related metrics like average time per page (how long users are staying on pages) and average session length (how long users are staying on the website) can also be extremely informative both to a business and designers. For example, visitors may be staying on a page for a long time because of strong interest, but if it is a page designed to quickly redirect users to more specific products or pages, it may be due to confusion or too many options.

Traffic Sources

Today, most people don’t navigate to a new website by typing the URL into their browser’s address bar. Instead, most people are directed to a website from ads, social media, emails, blogs or even other websites. Measuring a website’s traffic’s sources helps determine where new and returning visitors are coming from, helping to determine which marketing is most effective and where a business can maintain and further grow its clientele. Inversely, it can also identify which channels might be lacking and if you need new marketing strategies.

Bounce Rate vs Engagement Rate

Another informative metric to measure and track is the bounce rate. This tracks how many visitors load a page on the website and then leave without clicking or interacting with anything on the site. This can indicate certain design elements are not grabbing attention or perhaps a certain page is causing more bounces than others.

Engagement Rate is the opposite of a bounce rate and a good measurement to compare with the bounce rate. The engagement rate tracks how many visit the website and interact with anything, including buttons, images, videos, etc. With the engagement and bounce rates together, a business can get a full sense of the impression its website provides.

Tools for Measuring your Website

All these metrics are important to track, but that may leave the question of how you measure them. Of course, there are countless tools and plug-ins available to help you track metrics. We’ll highlight a few standards.

Shopify Analytics

Shopify includes in its platform a dashboard which helps track various metrics about an ecommerce website. Along with some of the essential metrics we’ve mentioned, it also includes various business performance metrics that can help track both your website and ecommerce business.

MonsterInsights

WordPress does not offer a free built-in analytic dashboard like Shopify, but it does have a large suite of plug-ins. MonsterInsights is one of the more robust plug-ins and offers a wide range of tracking for a website along with Google Analytics.

Google Analytics

Of course, the web giant Google provides its own web analytics platform that can track and measure a website’s various metrics. Google Analytics, part of Google’s large Marketing Platform, provides all these key metrics and also connects to other Google services, for an even fuller picture of all your digital marketing. Its services are also built into WordPress’ Premium plan, and Shopify sites can be connected to the platform.

Matomo

Another popular web analytics platform is Matomo. Along with a thorough set of analytics, Matomo is particularly popular for its data ownership policy and self-hosting option, allowing a business to keep the metric tracking in-house. Its WordPress plugin can make it an easy addition to any WordPress site.

Making Sense of the Metrics

Tracking and measuring key metrics of your website can be extremely informative. A key thing to remember when tracking these metrics is that they are numbers alone. Measurements mean nothing without careful analysis. For example, a click-rate could be high or low for various reasons. The metrics become even more informative when they are combined, e.g. observing that traffic coming from a certain source has higher engagement rates. Your web design and digital marketing team at Rosewood will have the expertise to identify the important metrics, understand what they mean, and turn them into actionable strategies for your business. If you’re ready to start tracking measurements and consider the invaluable data of your business’ website, contact Rosewood’s web team.

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Loyalty-Driven Gamification: Fostering Customer Engagement and Retention

Floating credit cards of three different tiers with coins of money falling around

We’ve explained before how important customer loyalty is for any business, and a returning clientele’s support is even more important for smaller businesses. Those dedicated customers help a business thrive and grow as they recommend your products or services to their friends and family. This is why loyalty programs are a key strategy for customer retention, especially in e-commerce. However, any loyalty program needs to be well designed to effectively foster customer engagement. One of the strongest methods is gamification. We’ll explain what gamification is and how you can start to gamify your loyalty program below.

What does gamification mean?

Gamification or gamifying means applying game-design elements to non-game contexts. This can refer to systems like point scoring, rankings, leaderboards, badges, competition, and other game elements. Along with loyalty programs, gamification like this has been applied widely in multiple industries and settings. Workplaces have used gamification for increased productivity. Schools and educational software have used gamification to encourage learning. Many athletic apps even use gamification to motivate physical exercise. Furthermore, government organizations and researchers have considered gamification to improve voter turnout or reduce the occurrence of traffic violations.

Why is gamification effective?

The wide use of gamification alone should suggest its effectiveness. This is because game-design elements have been shown to create more retention and interaction with a system. Gamification plays on innate desires for being rewarded, often with visual and audio indicators that add some fanfare to mark the victory. Some other game systems, such as collective goals or leaderboards, also build on human social tendencies of cooperation and competition. Altogether gamification is extremely motivating and for businesses that means fostering healthy and active customer engagement and dedication.

Gamified Loyalty Programs for Small Businesses

Many loyalty programs already use some principles of gamification. The most widely used is point collection systems, where customers gain points for all or certain transactions. These points can then be used to redeem discounts or other bonuses. This can be immediately rewarding, but there are other ways to design a strong loyalty program and drive more engagement and retention through gamification.

Ways to Create a Strong Gamified Loyalty Program

  • Simple is Effective: Sometimes a complex game can be satisfying to learn, but the most popular games are those that are easy to pick up. It’s the same for gamifying a loyalty program. When it isn’t clear how a customer gains points, badges, titles, or other rewards, the loyalty program quickly becomes confusing, unrewarding, or even frustrating. Both potential earnings and rewards should be clear. For example, make it simple how each transaction will gain a certain number of points or contribute to earning a certain rank or title. This clear communication about what can be earned helps to further motivate customer engagement.
  • Titles, Ranks, and Other Recognition: Point systems are familiar territory for most loyalty programs. However, they can quickly lose appeal if they are the only system. An effective way to start rounding out a gamified loyalty program is other rewards and recognition, such as titles or badges featured on customer profiles that are earned for certain customer engagement. These could be tied to points. For example, earning a certain amount unlocks a VIP title that offers better discounts, things like free shipping and more point collecting opportunities. However, loyalty is created and can be gamified through other engagements, which leads us to our next point.
  • Moving Gamifying Beyond Gamifying Transactions: There’s more to customer engagement and loyalty than just repeating business. Gamification is a great way to leverage and encourage true loyalty. For example, titles or badges could be given for repeated business over years. You could also offer exclusive experiences or event attendance. You can reward those who follow your social channels, where you could also then offer opportunities to get more points or create community goals. Points, discounts, and titles can also be given for referrals or recommendations, motivating customers to help your business grow.
  • Audio and Visual Recognition: The key here is recognition. Along with clear systems, the recognition of titles, and the practical rewards of discounts, a key part of gamification is visual and audio systems that reflect progress and success. It might seem silly, but seeing a bar fill shows progress. Some fanfare with animations of spark and/or confetti and a celebratory tune for earning a title or new rank provide the audio and visual feedback that motivates further engagement.

Start Gamifying Your Loyalty

With how effective gamification is, you’ll likely want to start gamifying your business loyalty program or start building one. Thankfully, this doesn’t have to be done from the start. Many loyalty program platforms help you create a loyalty program that suits your business and customers, such as smile.io. If you’re ready to start encouraging and fostering more customer engagement and retention, contact our web experts at Rosewood Marketing. They will help you determine the right system while our marketing team helps devise the game-design elements for your business.

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