Weight & build
Maximum number of cookies exceeded
- Published limit
- 25 cookies
What Google's rule says
Google's stated rule is that the ad sets more than 25 cookies. Authorized Buyers words it as the number of cookies being set exceeding 25.
What actually causes it
- Multiple identity vendors each dropping their own set of cookies from inside the creative.
- A frequency-capping or sequencing script that writes one cookie per creative variant.
- A vendor writing both a primary cookie and a fallback for browsers that block the first.
- Cookie syncs that belong on the page being run from within the ad instead.
How to fix it
Clear cookies, load the creative once, and list what was written and by whom. The budget is per creative, so a tag that passes on its own can fail the moment it is wrapped — test the wrapped version, not the bare one.
The part that is not obvious
Twenty-five is a per-creative budget shared with everyone in the tag chain, which makes it a collective allowance rather than yours to spend. It also degrades quietly: as browsers restrict third-party cookies, vendors add fallbacks rather than removing the originals, so the same creative slowly accumulates writes over a campaign it did not have on day one. Nothing in the creative changed; the ceiling simply arrived.
Related reasons
Reason name, threshold verified against Common ad disapproval reasons — Authorized Buyers Help on 30 July 2026. The causes and fix above are practitioner guidance, not Google policy text.