In January 2018, an important change will take place for Google Ad Grants account administrators. In this blog, we explain the implications of this change.
Just a quick recap of what Google Ad Grants also means: this is the Adwords program that offers organizations with a social charity, an alternative to expensive Adwords campaigns. In fact, this program offers nonprofit organizations $10,000 ad credit per month for their AdWords campaigns to promote their mission. Meanwhile, 35,000 nonprofit organizations are using the Google Grants program.
Changes effective Jan. 1, 2018
CTR 5%
The biggest change is the criteria for CTR. All Google Ad Grants must maintain a 5% CTR each month. If the required CTR is not met for two consecutive months, the account will be cancelled!
Accounts at this risk will receive a notification from Google that they are below 5% and tips to improve CTR again. Google says the 5 percent CTR is lower than the current average in the program and that new requirements, as described in this blog, are being made to decrease the number of low-quality keywords and not target competitor keywords. This would ensure that most accounts easily maintain an average CTR of 5 percent.
News is that more than the maximum cpc of $2 can be bid when using the "maximize number of conversions" automatic bidding strategy, if account performance warrants.
Other requirements:
- Nonprofits cannot buy branded keywords they do not own;
- Keywords must have a quality score of 2 or higher;
- Campaigns should have at least 2 active ad groups, each with a set of closely related keywords and two action ad texts;
- Accounts must also have at least two active sitelink extensions;
- Accounts must use geotargeting;
- Most one-word keywords are banned. Reason: nonprofit organizations must choose well-targeted keywords.
Change effective Jan. 1, 2018
The change goes into effect January 1, 2018. That's almost already... So it is essential that you look at your current accounts now. To what extent do your accounts already meet the new requirements, and how can you improve the accounts that do not meet them before Jan. 1?
Google will send email notifications about certain accounts that do not meet the new requirements on Jan. 1. You will then have some time to make adjustments. If your account has already been deactivated by Google, you can still call Google for reinstatement after changes are made.
Are you currently managing a Google Grant account and need help meeting the new required criteria? Then get some advice from the SearchUser specialists.
