Google Ads is rolling out mandatory brand guidelines, requiring all advertisers to officially document their business name and logo by March 2025. If you don’t update it, Google will automatically select a name and logo based on past campaign performance.

For recruitment marketing teams, the updated Google Ads brand guidelines directly impact how your employer identity appears in job ads. If your recruitment campaigns run separately from corporate branding, there’s a risk that Google may assign the wrong branding, making your ads look misaligned or generic.

What Happens If You Ignore the New Google Ads Brand Guidelines

Google’s new Performance Max guidelines may auto-assign corporate branding based on “top-performing” assets, potentially overshadowing your distinct hiring brand. Instead of seeing “CompanyNameCareers“  or “CompanyNameHiring,” candidates might only see your parent company logo and name. When that happens: 

  • Your carefully curated corporate brand disappears behind corporate imagery
  • Default business names fail to reflect who’s actually hiring
  • Candidates miss the connection between your company and the job ad

This brand mismatch isn’t just a cosmetic issue; it can reduce CTRs and frustrate candidates who think they’ve landed on the wrong ad.

The fix is simple: manually update your employer brand settings before March. Here’s how.

Quick Guide: How Recruitment Teams Can Update Employer Branding in Google Ads

To ensure your job ads reflect the right employer branding, follow these steps before March 2025:

Step 1: Access your brand guidelines in Google ads

  • Log into Google Ads → Navigate to Brand Settings under your Performance Max campaign.
  • Select the recruitment-specific ad account (not corporate or product marketing).
  • In the campaign settings, select ‘Brand Guidelines’.

Step 2: Update employer branding assets

  • Business name → Enter the name that represents your employer brand, distinct from the parent company.
  • Logo → Upload up to five versions of your logo, including square and landscape formats to accommodate different ad placements.

Step 3:  Review and override Google’s auto-selection

Check your recruitment ads and manually adjust names and logos to match your employer brand.

Step 4: Save and monitor branding across all recruitment campaigns

  • Double-check updates after saving—ensure all job ads pull the correct branding.
  • Set periodic reminders to review branding settings that are still intact.

By taking these steps now, you maintain control over your brand’s representation in job ads, ensuring consistency and authenticity in your recruitment efforts.

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Updating it now saves time later and keeps your recruitment ads on point. If you’re looking for ways to simplify the rest of your hiring strategy, we’re always happy to chat. And in the meantime, you can see how we do it here.