Video
Media not fully functional
What Google's rule says
Authorized Buyers states that the ad is disapproved because the creative is not functional or contains broken assets. Google's rejected-creatives page carries the same condition, and separately lists a blank creative — one that fails to load or appears empty.
What actually causes it
- An asset host that is unreachable, rate-limited or geo-restricted where the ad serves.
- An expandable that does not expand outside an iframe.
- A creative that renders blank because targeting, a verification service or a consent state stopped it loading.
- A file format the environment cannot decode, so the slot fills with nothing.
How to fix it
Serve the creative in the environment that rejected it rather than previewing it in the ad server. Preview loads assets from a context the live ad does not have, so a creative that is broken only in the wild will look perfect in the tool you are checking it with.
The part that is not obvious
Google lists blank as its own rejection reason and names geo-targeting, user targeting and verification services as causes — meaning a creative can be judged broken because something legitimately decided not to show it. That is the trap in this reason: the failure is often correct behaviour by another system, so the creative is not what needs repairing. Before re-cutting assets, establish whether the ad rendered nothing or was prevented from rendering, because the two produce the same disapproval and share no fix.
Related reasons
Reason name 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.