Google Ads has added a second way for telemedicine businesses to get certified to advertise, this time through the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's Healthcare Merchant Accreditation Program. It sits alongside the existing certification route and takes effect this month.
This matters most to telehealth and online pharmacy operators advertising to patients in the United States, since NABP is a US body and its accreditation programme is built around US pharmacy regulation. For a clinic, telehealth platform or pharmacy based in Oman and advertising locally or across the GCC, this specific change does not open a new door. Google's healthcare advertiser policies are set per country, and the certifiers accepted for Oman or the wider Gulf are not the same list as for the US market.
That said, any brand in Oman running or planning to run Google Ads for telehealth consultations, prescription delivery, or online pharmacy services should already know whether their category requires certification here, and who the accepted certifiers are for Oman specifically. Ad rejections in this space are usually a certification gap, not a creative problem, and they can stall a campaign launch for weeks if caught late.
What to do about it
- Check your Google Ads account for any healthcare or telemedicine policy flags now
- Confirm which certifiers Google currently accepts for Oman before launching a healthcare campaign
- If you advertise to US patients from Oman, review whether NABP certification applies to you
- Build certification lead time into any telehealth or pharmacy campaign timeline
Useful to someone on your team?