So you’ve heard the news! Nonprofit Google Ad Grants new rules rolled out in December, and organizations have two months to get into compliance. The February deadline is looming, and a lot of organizations are scrambling to rethink how they run their accounts.
No one’s quite sure what’s Google’s purpose with restructuring the program. Some say this is beginning of the end for the program (and the free $10K/month in ad dollars). Others claim that Google is simply cracking down on nonprofits who don’t properly manage their accounts and reflect badly on the advertiser.
But let’s not ponder what logic drives the Silicon Valley giant. All we know is we want to get the most out of our free ads. And no one wants to get their account shutdown! Here’s a quick rundown of the rules and my suggestions for how to fix your account.
Nonprofit Google Ad Grants New Rules:
- The good! No more $2 bid cap (but you will need to set up goals in Google Analytics and use them to run maximize conversions bidding.)
- The bad! Your account must have a 5% average click through rate (and if it fails to meet this two months in a row, it will be shut down. Yikes!)
- And the easy:
- You must make use of geo-targeting (I once talked to a nonproft that only operated in one state. However, it accidentally ran its free AdWords nationwide. Preventing that sort of bad user experience is probably exactly what Google had in mind).
- You must have at least two active ad groups. These must contain related keywords and two active text ads.
- You must have two sitelink extensions
- You cannot advertise against other brand names