I've been working with Google Ads and Adsense for 15 years. They've done a lot to reduce scammers running rampant, but as you point out it's made it really difficult for legitimate small businesses to get anywhere with them.
There is a huge advantage to aged/existing accounts on both ends. You can get away with a lot more with an older Adwords/Adsense account that will get you insta-suspended than with a new accounts. This creates a huge moat and competitive advantage for older advertisers and publishers.
Making it worse, it is also easy for existing bad actors to shut down competitors by having bot networks click ads and create various other suspicious activity to protect their moat.
New accounts are automatically broad-sweep targeted to remove bad actors. It's pretty difficult to get new Adsense/Ads accounts approved, and they will very quickly get suspended or limited for anything that looks abnormal or suspect to their filters.
Additionally, there is huge separation. Even though Ads/Adsense are the same side of the coin, they're run like completely separate businesses that have no relationship. The same policy runs within each business as well. Customer service and policy enforcement are completely separate. Google Adsense customer service, even for high level publishers, has no direct recourse to dealing with the policy team - and publishers have no direct person contact. It's all done through the form. There's no overriding recourse or secret access. Even if you hire a lawyer to send a letter, you will only get a canned response from customer service.
There is an important security aspect of it, but it's also incredibly frustrating and opaque. Imagine your buddy in customer service could override policy decisions or influence getting competitors banned. It could literally be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Google does have to be very careful about dealing with security issues both within and outside the company.
There is a huge advantage to aged/existing accounts on both ends. You can get away with a lot more with an older Adwords/Adsense account that will get you insta-suspended than with a new accounts. This creates a huge moat and competitive advantage for older advertisers and publishers.
Making it worse, it is also easy for existing bad actors to shut down competitors by having bot networks click ads and create various other suspicious activity to protect their moat.
New accounts are automatically broad-sweep targeted to remove bad actors. It's pretty difficult to get new Adsense/Ads accounts approved, and they will very quickly get suspended or limited for anything that looks abnormal or suspect to their filters.
Additionally, there is huge separation. Even though Ads/Adsense are the same side of the coin, they're run like completely separate businesses that have no relationship. The same policy runs within each business as well. Customer service and policy enforcement are completely separate. Google Adsense customer service, even for high level publishers, has no direct recourse to dealing with the policy team - and publishers have no direct person contact. It's all done through the form. There's no overriding recourse or secret access. Even if you hire a lawyer to send a letter, you will only get a canned response from customer service.
There is an important security aspect of it, but it's also incredibly frustrating and opaque. Imagine your buddy in customer service could override policy decisions or influence getting competitors banned. It could literally be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Google does have to be very careful about dealing with security issues both within and outside the company.