Weather-based campaign management in Google Ads

This is a technique that businesses use, to advertise snug overcoats only when it’s cold outside, and sell you umbrellas only when it’s raining. But why might a nonprofit want to do this?

Well, here’s a charity that used this technique successfully: The Salvation Army ran ads over winter, asking people to donate to help the homeless. They wanted to ensure they spent their money wisely, to get a good return on their investment.

The reasoning was that people are much more likely to be concerned with the plight of homeless people when it’s freezing outside. The worse the weather, the higher the conversion rate is likely to be. So we ran ads that switched on when it was very cold, and switched back off when the temperature rose.

What were the results? Not bad. We achieved a decent 500% return on actual spend, spending £1 to get every £5 revenue in donations.

Watch the video below to find out how we used a Google Ads Script to connect to the Open Weather Map API.

Resources

The Open Weather API:
openweathermap.org/appid

Google's Weather-Based Campaign Management Script:
developers.google.com/google-ads/scripts/docs/solutions/generic-weather