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.