These Are the Key Differences Between a Google Ad Grant and Paid Ads

While the Google Ad Grant and Paid Google Ads are both advertising platforms within Google, they have major differences that set one another apart. For starters, a Google Ad Grant account provides free Google Ads advertising up to $10,000 a month to eligible nonprofits. However, with a Paid Google Ads account, the cost of advertising is attached to a form of payment that you choose. With a paid account, there is no free grant money that Google is providing.

Additionally, there are certain stipulations that all Google Ad Grantees must adhere to in order to continually receive access to the free advertising budget, like a maximum cost per click of two dollars and a minimum click-thru-rate (CTR) of five percent. For more information about the Ad Grant specifically, check out our resource on the Google Ad Grant: What It Is, How It Works, and Where to Get Started.

Within a Paid Google Ads account, account holders have access to more functions of the advertising platform as well. The ability to utilize various tactics within the paid platform helps to increasingly target audiences. Unfortunately, these tools are not available within the Google Ad Grant account.

Some of the major things that the Google Paid Account allows access to include:

• – All campaign types such as Search, Display, Shopping, Video, and the Universal App (with a Google Ad Grant account, account holders only have access to utilizing search ads)
• – Google Ads Remarketing Lists through campaign types such as search (RLSA) and Display
• – The ability to test the full range of bidding strategies beyond manual cost-per-click (CPC) and smart bidding strategies
• – The ability to target branded keywords not owned by your organization, or competitor keywords

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So, the key differences between the accounts is the fact that paid advertisers have fewer restrictions and more freedom on their account than Google Ad Grantees do. For this reason, paid advertisers will almost always show above Ad Grant advertisers in the search results. This is extremely important to take into consideration when going after competitive keywords that most likely have high donation or purchase intent.

However, the Google Ad Grant account does have $10,000 in free monthly ad spend to leverage that paid advertisers do not. So, just because paid advertisers are more likely to show their ads above those of Ad Grant advertisers, this doesn’t mean that their ads won’t yield impressive results. With an innovative strategy and the effective implementation of it, the Google Ad Grant can be an extremely useful tool for nonprofit marketers to utilize.

Konrad Altvater