Major Changes to Google AdWords Ad Grants

Google is radically changing how your AdWords Account will continue to comply with your Ad Grant. The most alarming changes are that all keywords must have a Quality Score of 3 or more, and the account must maintain a 5% Click-through Rate. 

These policy updates are effective January 1, 2018 for all Ad Grantees. Here are all the changes:

Account structure

More requirements for using AdWords are being phased in:

• Ad Grants accounts must have specific geo-targeting to show ads in locations relevant to your nonprofit.
• Ad Grants AdWords accounts must have:
• At least 2 active ad groups per campaign each containing a set of closely related keywords and 2 active text ads
• At least 2 sitelink ad extensions

Keywords

The following keywords and queries for serving Ad Grants ads are not permitted:

• Branded words that you don’t own like “YouTube” or “Google” or names of newspapers or other organizations
• Single-word keywords (excluding your own branded words, recognized medical conditions, and a small number of exception keywords published here)
• Note terms with dashes, periods, or special characters are not treated as single-word keywords
• Overly generic keywords like “free videos”, “e-books”, “today's news”, “easy yoga”, “download games”, “job alert”, names of places, names of historical events/people
• Keywords with a Quality Score of 2 or less

Performance

All Ad Grants AdWords accounts must maintain a 5% click-through rate (CTR) each month.  If the CTR requirement isn't met for 2 consecutive months, your account will be cancelled.