Google Ad Grants for Non-Profits | 2022 Review

If your charity or non-profit isn’t taking advantage of Google Ad Grants yet, you’re missing out on $10,000 of free advertising every month.

And in 2022, the deal has become even sweeter, with more features than ever before being added to the Google Ad Grants platform. (Including some of the previous restrictions having clever workarounds which we’ll reveal in this article…)

What are Google Ad Grants?

Google Ad Grants are $10k (around £7k) monthly grants which Google provides to non-profit organisations and charities for free. Officially, it’s for Search Adverts* with a maximum cost per click (CPC**) of $2.

* Search Adverts: The adverts that appear on the results page when you search on Google for something

** CPC: Every time someone clicks one of these search adverts, it costs money. The more popular the search term, usually, the higher the cost per click.

With the $2 CPC limit, Ad Grants adverts used to struggle when the keywords/search terms were competitive. Because Google Ads works on a bidding system - the more people bidding on a lucrative search term, the higher the price.

However, thanks to the recent changes, there's now a way to get Google Ads Grants adverts to appear, even if the CPC is more than $2. This opens up plenty of possibilities for getting adverts appearing in those competitive searches...

Google Ad Grants Features in detail

Here is a summary of the recent Google Ad Grants updates which we’ve split into 3 parts. 

Remember these are still for Search Adverts, so there aren’t any visuals involved and you only really have <100 characters. Therefore, each advert has to be really enticing to hook people in.

Add custom audiences

In the past, you could play around with keywords, so that everyone who searched for certain things on Google could see your advert.

This was great for getting your adverts seen by as many as possible. But less great for creating ads for people who know and care about your charity.

The Ad Grants updates allow you to drill down and define your target audience even further by choosing the type of people who see your advert.

• By your own data - adding in your own email list or CRM and then either targeting those people or people who share similar characteristics
• By specific location - perfect for if you have a supporter group in an area or are a regional charity*
• By people interested in charity/other subjects - Google can tell by users’ past searches and interactions whether they’d be suitable to show your adverts to*

We can help choose the right audience for your advert. Contact Bliss for free paid marketing advice.

Remarketing/retargeting adverts

Remarketing allows you to set adverts to target people who have previously been to your website. (Google doesn’t reveal the names of these people to you, you just choose your audience and it does its magic behind the scenes.)

This allows you to create adverts that have the assumption that the audience already knows who you are. Rather than having to have some sort of introduction to your charity in every ad.

You can even remarket to people who have been on specific website pages and cater ads towards them. Perfect for people interested in your events, a specific branch of your business, or are close to donating.

Dynamic adverts

Dynamic adverts switch around the traditional advertising formula.

Which allows you to really play around with the types of adverts you create using the Google Ads Grant.

Benefits of Dynamic Advertising

• Increase reach way beyond a traditional search campaign by allowing Google to target users based on the content of your site instead of using keywords
• An excellent way to increase traffic quickly, especially if you have an Ad Grants account that is not spending the entire $10k budget
• If your target keywords are too expensive/competitive, and you're not getting the visibility, dynamic ads will help by focusing on your content
• Use automated bidding along with Dynamic Search Ads to get around the $2 CPC cap

Disadvantages of Dynamic Advertising

• Smart as the Google Algorithm is, it can sometimes get a little confused and choose odd-looking headlines
• If you want to convert traffic, you may need to update and improve more landing pages.
• You can control what pages people see but this may affect reach
• You can only customise the description part of the advert

Should I use Google Ad Grants?

Absolutely! 

You can find out if you’re entitled to the grant on Google’s forums.  If you are, have a play around making some adverts. It’s free!

What we often find is spending the $10k per month can actually be trickier than it sounds. Especially if your keywords are competitive and you’re not familiar with automated bidding or dynamic adverts and have a $2 CPC threshold for each click.

That’s why we’re happy to help with some free, professional paid advertising advice. Simply fill in your details below and we’ll get back to you.