Google recently announced some huge policy changes to the Google Ad Grants program. The changes will have a big impact on nonprofit advertising on Adwords. Google Ad Grants are advertising grants that Google gives to nonprofit organizations. The Ad Grants provide up to $10,000 a month in Adwords funds for eligible nonprofits. While this money is quite generous, it's always been notoriously hard for advertisers to spend. Why's that? Because up until January 2018, Google had capped Ad Grants cost-per-click (CPC) bids at $2.00. Anyone advertising on Google lately knows CPCs can be way more expensive than $2.00! Ad Grants bid cap removed in January 2018 In December of 2017, Google announced they planned to lift their $2.00 bid cap for Ad Grants members. But the bid cap change has some strings attached to it: Ad Grants members that want to increase their bids have to use the AdWords maximize conversions bid setting. What is maximize conversions bidding? Maximize conversions bidding is an automated bid strategy in AdWords. This setting will increase bids when a higher bid is more likely to result in a conversion. Google uses a lot of buzz words to explain max conversion bidding. They use terms like "machine learning," and "automatically optimize." Reading between the lines, what Google is saying is that this setting will maximize your conversions. All you need to do is click the button, and Google will take care of the rest. The result is Google will raise your bids if the increased bids will lead to more conversions. What are the implications of the new Ad Grants bid policies? The changes appear to be good news. The policy change shows that Google wants Ad Grants members to use this type of bidding. There's really no reason for Ad Grants members not to use maximize conversions bidding. This bid setting allows them to spend over $2.00 per click, and should allow them to get more conversions overall. Increased bids will also help nonprofits come closer to spending their entire $10,00 Ad Grants budget. Google Ad Grants performance standards Google has also put new Ad Grants performance standards in place. They will require at least a 5% click-through-rate (CTR) to stay in the Ad Grants program. The 5% CTR is a monthly target averaged across all keywords. Now, Google claims to average more than a 5% CTR on all Ad Grants. This performance standard shouldn't effect good advertisers that monitor their performance. But, advertisers that are throwing away money on poorly run ads will get kicked off the Ad Grants program. What’s the outcome of the Google Ad Grants changes - read the full post here - https://goo.gl/nmksUu

1. Updates in
Google AdWords
Grants – 2018
Edition

2. Gr
Google Ad
Grants

3. What are Google
Grants?

4. Google Ad Grants for Non-Profits
Learn more: https://www.google.com/grants/

5. $10,000 per month
in free advertising

6. But this money is
notoriously hard to
spend

7. Because clicks are
capped at $2.00

8. And Google clicks
are often
outrageously more
expensive

9. PPC Course Student Seth Asks

10. Google is lifting their bid cap of $2.00

11. But only conversion-maximized
campaigns

12. They have updated other policies as well

13. What are the
implications?

14. Google’s Maximize Conversions Bidding
Read more: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/7381968?hl=en

15. Google will bid
more per click, if
they think it will
lead to
conversions

16. This is good news,
and shows Google
wants grants
customers to use this
bidding method

17. It will help
advertisers reach
their $10,000 ad
spend cap easier

18. It will make
advertisers focus
more on high
converting process
vs. just going for
exposure

19. More changes
January 1, 2018

20. Geo Targeting and Ad Quality Standards
Read more:
https://support.google.com/grants/answer/117827?hl=en&ref_topic=3500093

21. Quality needs to stay high (CTR
minimum)
Read more:
https://support.google.com/grants/answer/117827?hl=en&ref_topic=3500093

22. Overall thoughts:
Google isn’t
letting you take
Ad Grants for
granted

23. Forcing non-profits
to be better
advertisers is a good
thing for all of us.
Quality stays high.

24. What do you
think of this
change?

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