Microsoft adCenter Says No To Spanish Landing Pages For US Traffic

Joe Spector wrote that when he tried designing a landing page for the Latino US market, he was rejected by Microsoft adCenter due to using Spanish on the page.

Specifically, Joe created a landing page that was targeting US-based Spanish-speaking customers. We all know the Spanish-speaking market is huge in the US. Microsoft denied all his ads due to the landing page and search ad not being in English.

Microsoft sent him this rejection notice:

The reason for the disapproval is because of the use of a foreign language on the landing page. You are using the English US distribution channel and targeting the US and so you must use only the English language on the landing page.

Also, note that the words tu media naranja in the ad will need to be changed to English.

I emailed Microsoft for a statement on this policy. I dug into Google and Yahoo’s policies and I could not find a policy stating you can only use English on your landing pages. In this specific case of targeting a US geographic location and at the same time the Spanish speaking market, it just seems a bit much to disallow such an ad.