Why do PPC agencies and experienced advertisers struggle with Google Ad Grants?

It sometimes seems that the more experience someone has with managing paid Google Ads accounts, the more they struggle to get results for their clients with Google Ad Grants. If anything, they get more frustrated than other users.

They're used to getting near-instant impressions for their ad campaigns. They expect to be able to spend the daily budget easily. Their instinct is to use bidding strategies and techniques that either aren't available or won't work in a grant account. They have to report back to the client organization, and might have raised unrealistic expectations.

Here are a few observations you might find useful, based on the consultancy sessions I've had with agencies, and some advice.

Read the Ad Grant policies

You're likely familiar with Google Ads policies, but don't overlook all those Ad Grant specific policies. Read them all: support.google.com/grants/topic/3500093. Ad Grant policies are layered on top of Google Ads policies, so nonprofits have to follow even more rules than businesses.

Understand how the placement of free ads limits Impression share

You're probably aware that free ads appear below paid ads in search results, but let's think through how that actually affects your campaigns, because it's key to getting results and a major difference between a grant and a paid account.

There are two separate bidding auctions: the first one for paid, the second for grant.

Only if there is ad space left will grant ads get shown. In practice that limits most grant campaigns to <10% Impression share: ads get shown maybe a tenth as often as they would in a paid account. Even for brand terms, a high Impression rate is unlikely.

That's not necessarily a problem if your client is a national or international charity, but if they are local and if what they do is niche, then they may not be able to get enough impressions.

The problem is compounded if there is a lot of competition for keywords. That factor is often overlooked by agencies new to working with nonprofits, who under-estimate how competitive the nonprofit sector can be, especially for donation keywords, and especially in certain sub-sectors where there are a lot of other nonprofits with grants (churches, cancer orgs).

If you add audiences, do so in Observation mode until you have established there's enough Impressions to make targeting work. Unless the audience size is huge, don't bother with remarketing in a grant account, do that in paid instead.

Your instinct is probably to check Auction Insights to check out competitors, but in a grant account you probably won't see any data, because that report only works when there's an Impression share > 10%.

If a nonprofit has both a paid and grant account, only one ad will ever be shown at a time. You never need to worry about a grant account suppressing paid results.

Choosing nonprofit clients

Knowing the above, I'm picky which charities I take on as clients for ongoing management. I rarely work with local or regional nonprofits. I'll happily work with the ones in competitive fields but I'll recommend a Grant + Paid strategy. For certain types of nonprofit I'll recommend Microsoft Ads instead because they have cheaper CPC and often the demographic of Bing users closely matches nonprofits' ideal donor profile: older, more money, more likely to spend, more likely to donate higher amounts.

I must admit that seems a bit unfair to the small, local, niche nonprofits... by all means work with them, but realize it's more of a challenge.

Choosing a bidding strategy

In an Ad Grant after 90 days you have to use a conversion-based bidding strategy. But why wait? Do it immediately.

You cannot use manual bidding, enhanced cpc, or target impression share. Those can work well in a paid account but in a grant will get capped at a useless $2 bid.

In my experience the best way to launch a new grant campaign is to use Max conversions with a relatively high Target CPA, which you reduce over time. Adding a Target CPA can also be a useful way to kick-start a flat-lined campaign, and seems to work around 4 out of 5 times.

Get momentum

Ad Grants are generally slower to start getting impressions than paid ads. That often catches out experienced advertisers who assume there's a problem when impressions don't immediately happen. Be a bit more patient. Don't be tempted to change the bidding strategy to manual bidding.

Not getting impressions? Read the lesson in this course about fixing low impressions in an Ad Grant account.

Keyword quality scores

Quality scores are more important in Ad Grants than in paid accounts. In paid even keywords with very low scores might still get impressions: not so much in a grant. Make it a priority to maintain high QS. Read this lesson about keyword Quality scores.

Ownership and access

I recommend that as an agency you don't set up the nonprofit's Ad Grant or Google for Nonprofits account or their Google Analytics account for them. Instead, give them guidance so they can do it themselves. From the very start, establish that they have ownership of their properties.

A reputable agency should be using a Google manager's account (MCC) to access client accounts, instead of logging in as a regular user. See ads.google.com/home/tools/manager-accounts/.

Only request the level of access that you really need. Don't request to be the owner.

Encourage the nonprofit to set up at least two admins on their grant account. It's not uncommon for people to leave their post and no-one's able to login.

The Google Ad Grants Certified Professionals directory

There is a directory of agencies and freelancers that specialize in managing nonprofit's grant accounts: google.com/grants/get-help/certified-professional-agencies. Unfortunately it's not opened to new applications in several years, so it's not possible to join. That isn't necessarily an impediment to getting clients as there are reputable and skilled agencies and freelancers out there who aren't included and manage just fine.

Google Ads training courses by Jyll Saskin Gales

Is your agency looking for an in-depth course about Google Ads? I highly recommend Jyll Saskin Gales, she used to work at Google and really knows her stuff. She's so knowledgeable, even Google's own employees are signing up for her 100+ lessons and monthly call at learn.jyll.ca/iga. Jyll also has a course for Google Ads beginners at learn.jyll.ca/google-ads-for-beginners.

Want to see an example of one of Jyll's lessons? See this guest lesson about Performance Max campaigns.

Updated: August 2024