Google Ads uses a bidding auction to decide whether you ad gets shown, and how much a click will cost. So how high can a Google Ad Grant bid in an auction? I’d like to share some recent Cost Per Click (CPC) stats from charities’ accounts:
- US children’s policy—avg $8.63, highest $19.73
- UK adoption agency—avg $7.16, highest $13.42
- UK pregnancy—avg $4.22
- Int’l disaster appeal—avg $10.61
- Int’l health condition—avg $3.22
Across my 20+ clients’ Ad Grant accounts, the average CPC is $4.58.
None of these accounts has an average CPC lower than $2.30.
This illustrates why it’s so important for your campaigns to use a conversion-based bidding strategy, in order to automatically bid high. Don’t be stuck with low bids!
And don’t believe all the agencies out there telling you that your Google Ad Grant bid cannot be higher than $2. They haven’t realized that the rules changed over five years ago.
This begs a question: why are Ad Grant accounts often unable to compete when they can actually bid so high? Why do many charities also use a paid account to run Search ads?
The reason isn’t the bid amount. It’s because:
- Google places all free ads below all paid ads
- Impressions are artificially suppressed in Ad Grant accounts
If your Ad Grant account is struggling to compete and get impressions, it might still be possible to get clicks and conversions, or you may need to run paid ads: book an Ad Grants consultancy session with me and we’ll discuss your best strategy.
The Microsoft Ad Grant for nonprofits enables more competitive advertising
Depending on the type of work your nonprofit does, you are likely to find that your ads perform better on Microsoft Ads, which puts ads on the Bing search engine and several other sites. Since mid-2022 nonprofits have been able to apply for a Microsoft Ad Grant to get $3,000 worth of free ad budget. That’s less than the $10,000 from the Google Ad Grant, but many nonprofits are discovering that it’s actually more valuable. A few observations from running a dozen Microsoft Ad Grants for clients:
- Keywords that can’t get impressions in a Google Grant, can in a Microsoft Grant
- Donations are more frequent and for higher average amounts
- Leads and signups are cheaper
- Bids tend to be cheaper
- Click Through Rate (CTR) is much lower, but that’s ok because there’s no requirement to maintain a minimum CTR
The main reasons for such different results are that the Microsoft Ad Grant does not artificially suppress impressions, and free ads appear in the same bidding auctions as paid ads. In short: your ads can compete in a way they simply can’t on Google. And you’ll easily spend the monthly budget.
This means you can use different strategies in the Microsoft Ad Grant. You might only put up your single most important campaign, focusing on donations or signups; using the Google Ad Grant with its bigger budget for awareness topics.
The only problem? The program launched back in mid-June in multiple countries; then it was restricted to just the US; and as of now the program is on pause and not taking new applications. Once it re-opens I highly recommend you apply. Sign up to be informed when the Microsoft Ad Grant re-opens.
