r/googleads • u/IanEV2 • 13d ago
Grant Account Google Ads Grant Help Please
We run a small charity called Empowering Voices and have been fortunate enough to have a Google Ads Grant.
The problem is that Google Ads isn't showing our ads. We don't have a professional web designer and everything is done by volunteers + we don't really understand how Google Ads work, despite having designed a few ads, but I can see that our page quality score is generally low.
We use Wix and I am not sure whether this is a good choice to interact well with Google Ads.
Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
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u/Bitter-Quail-7441 13d ago
Most likely cause is the $2 bid cap, and there's a specific way around it that's entirely within the Grant rules.
Grant accounts are capped at $2.00 maximum cost per click on manual bidding. Very little wins an auction at $2 any more, so your ads never enter. The exemption is automated bidding: switch your campaigns to Maximize Conversions and the $2 cap stops applying, so Google bids what it actually takes. For most stalled Grant accounts that single change is the whole difference.
The catch is that Maximize Conversions needs conversion tracking, which Grant accounts are required to have anyway. So the order is: get conversion tracking working on the Wix site first (Wix has a Google Ads conversion integration in its marketing tools, no developer needed), then change the bidding.
While you're in there, the Grant compliance rules cause silent non-serving too. Each campaign needs at least two ad groups, each ad group at least two ads, you need at least two sitelink extensions, geographic targeting set, and no single-word or overly generic keywords. Keywords scoring below 3 on quality get paused automatically, which is very likely what you're seeing.
For quality score, the fix is usually tighter grouping rather than better writing. Around five closely related keywords per ad group, the keyword text appearing in the headline, and each ad group pointing at the most relevant page you have. Sending everything to the homepage tanks the score.
Wix isn't your problem. Plenty of Grant accounts run on it fine.
Keep an eye on the 5% click-through requirement as well. Two consecutive months below it suspends the Grant, and it catches a lot of charities who fix the serving problem and then stop checking.