--- title: How to fix low or no impressions in a Google Ad Grant description: A checklist of factors that prevent Google Ad Grant accounts getting impressions, and actions to take to overcome the problem --- [Skip to content](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-best-practice/fix-low-impressions-ad-grant#main-content) - [Home](https://kingjason.co.uk/) - [Enroll in course](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-complete-course) - [Book training session](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grant-training) - [Ad Grants best practice](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-best-practice) Open main navigation Close main navigation - [Home](https://kingjason.co.uk/) - [Enroll in course](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-complete-course) - [Book training session](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grant-training) - [Ad Grants best practice](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-best-practice) - [Enroll in Ad Grants course—$200](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-complete-course) [Enroll in Ad Grants course—$200](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-complete-course?hsLang=en) Google Ad Grants—What is current best practice? - There are no suggestions because the search field is empty. 1. [Best Practice](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-best-practice?hsLang=en) 2. [Ads not spending](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-best-practice/ads-not-spending?hsLang=en) October 12, 2026 # How to fix low or no impressions in a Google Ad Grant ## Let's go through the main factors that prevent your ads being seen, to figure out what actions you can take to kick-start your Ad Grant spend. Some non-profits struggle to to launch new Ad Grant campaigns and get their ads seen. But why is that? And if your campaigns have stalled, what can you do to fix the problem of low impressions and clicks in a Google Ad Grant? ### 1. Choose a correct bidding strategy Don’t choose manual bidding, maximize clicks, or target impression share. That mistake will cause your campaigns to never bid higher than $2 per click and you'll lose impressions. Google Ads uses a bidding auction where you compete with other advertisers to get ads shown. An incorrect bidding strategy hobbles your account and prevents it bidding high enough to win the auction. The average CPC is $4.50 and some campaigns bid as high as $15 or more. CPC has risen a lot over the last few years, making it more important than ever to use a conversion-based bidding strategy. Correct bidding strategy: **Maximize conversions**. That removes the $2 bid cap and enables the system to bid as high as it needs to. You could also try **Target CPA** (Cost Per Action) but the problem is that you don't yet have any data or know what average amount a conversion is likely to cost yet. If you're just starting out, set it to for example $300. Over time, reevaluate that amount based on the actual cost per conversion you see. You are allowed to use **Maximize conversion value** but that only makes sense if your Ad Grant regularly gets conversions of different dollar values, for example ticket sales. ### 2. Set up meaningful conversion tracking Right at the start you have to get to grips with the most technically complicated aspect of managing a Google Ads account: **conversion tracking**. Without this, your campaigns won't perform or spend properly. Google Analytics needs to track when visitors to your website take useful actions, then attribute those actions to the ads that led to them, or to other channels including organic Google search, Bing search, social media, emails, and referrals from other websites. Think backwards, in these steps: 1. What are your nonprofit’s objectives? 2. Does the website have calls to action for visitors to further the non-profit’s objectives? 3. Configure **events** in Google Analytics to track those actions as they happen 4. Mark the important ones as **conversions** 5. In Google Ads, import those **conversions** 6. Switch your campaigns to **Maximize conversions** Some examples of conversions might include: donations, newsletter signups, a volunteer interest form submitted, or contact form submitted, an important document downloaded, video watched, an important link to another website clicked, or an email address or telephone number clicked on. ### 3. Allocate the correct budget Set all campaign budgets set to $329 to enable each campaign to have the best chance to spend. Don’t worry about what that totals, because the daily spend will always get capped at $329 and it’s impossible to over-spend in an Ad Grant. ### 4. Create as few campaigns as possible Campaign performance is powered by conversions. You need to get plenty of conversions per campaign. So don’t set up more campaigns than are strictly necessary, or there won’t be enough conversions to go round. Having said that, there are legitimate reasons to create multiple campaigns: different geo-targeting, different languages, or if you’re targeting a wholly different audience. For example, you might have one campaign to target the public, and another to target professionals. ### 5. Don’t keep changing campaign settings New campaigns enter a five-day learning phase during which cost per click can fluctuate wildly. After that the message about learning disappears, but your campaigns never really stop learning. Get the settings right from the start and don't change the bidding strategy, the budget, or the conversion goals during the first weeks and months. ### 6. Don’t be local or niche The smaller your geographical reach, the less useful an Ad Grant will likely be, since there won’t be so many people searching for what you offer. Don’t widen the geo-targeting beyond where you provide services, since that will backfire: people won't convert, then your ads stop showing. For very localized nonprofits, you might find that a Google Business Profile, kept updated regularly, is more useful than an Ad Grant. Read the information below about how a location asset can put your ads on Google Maps, which is ideal for a local organization that wants visits or local support. Is the service or information your nonprofit offers of interest to only a very limited audience? That's often problematic in an Ad Grant, since there won’t be enough people searching for it. That said, if your topic is niche but your reach is national or international, that can be a great combination leading to a high volume of impressions, and a high Click Through Rate. ### 7. Don’t have a lot of competition Perhaps the most difficult barrier to overcome is competition. Cost Per Click has risen dramatically over the last few years in Ad Grant accounts, partly due to increased competition, as more and more nonprofits advertise. It’s bad enough when the competitors are mainly other nonprofits, but when they’re businesses you might find it near impossible to get impressions. To know why, you need to understand how Ad Grants are positioned relative to paid ads in the search results. All paid ads get shown above all grant ads… in a separate bidding auction. One auction takes place for paid accounts and potentially several of your competitors’ ads get shown at the top of search results. But those aren’t direct competitors: because you have an Ad Grant your keyword competes in the second auction, which only includes Ad Grant accounts. Now imagine what happens if there are a lot of advertisers, some with paid, some grant accounts. All the paid ones appear first and there’s nothing you can do about that; but then there’s a second auction and maybe you’ll win or lose it. Your ad might not appear at all, or it might end up placed well below all the others and rarely get clicked. That’s why almost every Ad Grant account gets a \<10% Impression share, meaning that less than one in ten of the times an ad could be shown, it’s your ad. That’s why it’s so difficult to get traffic in an Ad Grant if the non-profit is niche, local and faces competition. **What can you do about competition?** Try to win the bidding war against other Ad Grants. Keep your keywords' Quality Scores high. Have great landing pages with clear calls to action. Use Max conversions. Use the Ad Grant for the least competitive keywords, and use a paid account to run ads for the more difficult keywords. That’s why so many non-profits have paid accounts for donation asks. You’re allowed **one** Ad Grant and one **paid** account. If you don’t have an advertising budget, then only use the Ad Grant for awareness and information ads and don’t try donation or other difficult keywords. That can still be a viable long-term strategy, provided the website funnels people towards taking actions such as newsletter signups and list building. Keep testing keywords. Sometimes your competitors overlooked less obvious keywords. Maybe you have a niche within a niche that you could exploit, an angle that your competitors can’t take. ### 8. Try Dynamic Search Ads Final url expansion Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) are being phased out. Instead, switch on Final url expansion, which is an option in campaign settings. This permits Google Ads to use its own initiative and decide which landing pages it should send visitors to, not just the one in your ad's final url. You should get granular and for specific ad groups and asset groups you can tell the system which specific pages you want included or excluded. You can create a rule to target part of a url such as “/blog/” or “/get-involved/”. Is this a good idea? Depends on the structure of your website. Want to promote multiple events in a listing, or blog posts generally? Then try final url expansion. But don't use it if your ads should funnel visitors to a specific page to take a specific action. ### 9. Policy issues Google Ads has a **lot** of policies. Depending on what your nonprofit does, it might be impossible to use Google Ads, or just very difficult, or you might never have an ad disapproved. Sometimes ads are approved but given a “limited” status which means they will only be shown to some people in some countries at some times. To take just a few examples: a church might find ads greatly limited due to the “religious belief in personalized advertising” policy; a housing charity might find its ads flagged for the “Housing, employment, and credit” policy but still be able to advertise as normal so long as they don’t use demographic exclusions; an addiction nonprofit won’t be able to advertise at all unless they undertake a specific and costly certification process. Use the Policy Manager report in Google Ads to check which policies are currently affecting your ads and fix and appeal them as necessary. If you don’t understand why they’ve been applied, head to the [Google for Nonprofits community forum](https://support.google.com/nonprofits/community?hl=en) and ask for an explanation. ### 10. Keep keyword Quality Scores high In a Search campaign keywords can be assigned a Quality Score between 1 and 10. Not all keywords get scored, and scores can change from week to week. Within an ad group the higher the average score, the cheaper the CPC, and the more likely the ad is shown. Too many low quality keywords can flatline an account’s impressions, and this is a common reason for slow decline; but it can also be a problem on a new account. In the Keywords report, add these three columns: **Quality score**, **Landing page experience**, and **Ad relevance**. That helps you spot problems and diagnose whether it’s the ad text or the website causing them. - In an Ad Grant account keywords scoring only 1 or 2 get automatically paused. - Personally I remove or tweak any that score only 3 or 4, or try to improve the wording of the ad or the landing page. - Ideally I would want most keywords to score 7 and above. - Usually only the brand keywords score 10. ### 11. Improve website landing pages A slow website can adversely affect not only organic SEO but also ad performance. When you check keywords' quality scores, do you see mainly "below average" in the Landing page experience column? Then there might be work to do to improve the landing page that your ads send people to. Take a look at the page and ask yourself these questions: - Does the page load slowly? Use [Google's PageSpeed Insights tool](https://pagespeed.web.dev/). Look at the second-by-second screenshots of the site loading on mobile; and the performance score should be safely above 50/100. - Are there clear Calls To Action on those pages? Don't point ads at pages with no way for visitors to interact. - Have you set up conversion tracking for those actions? - Is the text on the page well written and persuasive? - Is there clear navigation to other pages that might also interest a visitor? - Is the page relevant to the keywords in the ad group? ### 12. Check settings that might restrict who sees your ads This advice isn’t for newly created campaigns, but if your campaign has a history, check the following: audience targeting, demographic exclusions for age and gender, and ad schedule. Check for any bid adjustments that are set to -100%. Sometimes these get applied then forgotten about. ### 13. Switch on Max AI in your Search campaign settings This is a broader-than-broad type of keyword match, which can also go beyond your designated landing page to send users to other pages on the website if you switch on final url expansion. The other thing it can do is put your ads into **AI overviews** in Google search results. Keep a regular eye on the Search terms report: filter by match type and choose AI Max in order to see whether the traffic was relevant or not. There is no such AI Max setting in a Performance Max campaign: they do this automatically. ### 14. Wait longer How recently did you create ads? Only a few days ago? Ad Grant accounts usually take longer to get momentum than paid Google Ads accounts. ### 15. What if longstanding campaigns have flatlined? It can happen. Campaigns that have run successfully for months or years, stop getting impressions and nothing you do seems to bring the spend back up. Sometimes you can't diagnose why the drop happened and it could be factors outside your control (like new competitors). There's a trick that some account managers use to counter this. In my experience it sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, but is worth a try if nothing else helps. If you're using Max conversions, switch to Target CPA (Cost Per Action) that's substantially higher than the average cost per conversion you've seen in the last six months. Some account managers switch campaigns temporarily to Max clicks, then back to Max conversions once they get clicks again: but I rarely see that technique work. ### 16. Use Performance Max The biggest missed opportunity I see when auditing accounts, is not having a Performance Max campaign. This was new in Ad Grants in 2025. It's a type of campaign that's keyword-less and instead about the audiences you want to target. I highly recommend you try it as on average it spends three times as easily as a search campaign. CPC tends to be a bit higher, and CTR and Conversion rate tend to be lower than Search campaigns... but its main advantage is spending the budget, for search terms that your Search campaign is likely to miss. ▶️[Watch this video to learn how to use Performance Max in an Ad Grant](https://support.google.com/grants/community-video/405970955) ### 17. Local nonprofits can put ads on Google Maps Performance Max campaigns can put ads in Google Maps, not just in search results. That can lead to useful conversions as people seek directions, save your location on the map, and even call you. To enable that, connect your ads account to your Google Business Profile account and create a **location asset**. ▶️ [Watch this video to learn how to put grant ads on Google Maps](https://support.google.com/nonprofits/community-video/402466815?hl=en) ---   Want to learn more about Google Ad Grants? Take my [Google Ad Grants course](https://course.kingjason.co.uk/) or [book a 1-to-1 training session](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grant-training?hsLang=en). Or if this solved a problem for you and you'd like to say thank you, why not [buy me a coffee](https://buy.stripe.com/00wdRa4i24eK00x6WA7kc02)? - [Policies and compliance](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-best-practice/policies-and-compliance?hsLang=en) - [Bidding strategies](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-best-practice/bidding-strategies?hsLang=en) - [Campaign types](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-best-practice/campaign-types?hsLang=en) - [Conversion tracking](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-best-practice/conversion-tracking?hsLang=en) - [Ads not spending](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-best-practice/ads-not-spending?hsLang=en) - [Google Maps](https://kingjason.co.uk/google-ad-grants-best-practice/google-maps?hsLang=en) [![Jason King—Ad Grants Consultant for Nonprofits](https://149412192.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hub/149412192/hubfs/Jason%20King+%20Google%20Ad%20Grants%20tutor.png?width=250&height=167&name=Jason%20King+%20Google%20Ad%20Grants%20tutor.png "Jason King—Ad Grants Consultant for Nonprofits")](https://kingjason.co.uk?hsLang=en) Jason King, Certified Google Ad Grants Professional Copyright © 2026,