How art galleries can use Google Ad Grants
We work with galleries across the UK and beyond to make sure they’re getting the best results from their Google Ad Grant. If you’re responsible for digital marketing at a gallery, keep reading for tips on how to make the most of that $10,000 monthly grant.
What is a Google Ad Grant?
A Google scheme with surprisingly no catch, an Ad Grant provides a handy $10,000 to spend on search ads every month. That’s a $120,000 budget for search ads each year, with the only requirement being that you adhere to some common sense policies that can be best summarised as “create good ads.”
Ad Grants are intended specifically for nonprofits and charities. If your organisation is eligible, you can begin the sign-up process here. As long as your Google accounts are in a tidy state it is a fast and painless process.
The grant can only be used for Google search ads. That means you won’t be able to use it for Display ads, or YouTube ads, and certainly not paid campaigns on other platforms such as Meta.
How do search ads work?
Search ads appear on Google search results pages. You’ll sometimes find sponsored ads above the organic results when you search on Google. There are many factors that can affect the visual appearance, so no two search ads will look quite the same. Here’s what you might see if you search for ‘donate to children’s charity’:
Ad Grants provide a way for charities to compete in search and boost their presence without needing the huge marketing budgets of more commercial entities.
Search ads are unusual in that they are directly tied to what the user types into Gogole. Unlike Display ads, which target either specific placements or audience interests, search ads use keywords and are shown to the user at the exact moment they are actively searching for the topic. This makes them very low funnel: if someone in the UK is searching for ‘donate to children’s charity’, it’s the perfect moment to show them the NSPCC ad.
Challenges for art galleries
Ad Grants aren’t just for the obvious charitable causes. Search ads can also work wonders for all manner of GLAM organisations, including galleries.
The secret to a successful Ad Grant account is understanding that search ads require relevance and volume.
Given the right targeting and budget, display ads will serve to people. There’s a certainty there, in terms of delivery. That’s not the case with search ads.
Search ads rely on people actively searching for terms related to your keywords. This means that if nobody is searching for what you do, your ads are unlikely to be seen, no matter how big your budget. A healthy budget certainly helps, but the key thing is for your ads to be deemed relevant.
We go into much more detail in our How to run a successful Ad Grant course over on Coach, but this graphic is a useful summary:
Google wants searches, your keywords, the ad copy and the landing page to all be tightly connected. Get that loop right, and your search ads will be a success.
This often means thinking carefully about what you’re using the grant to promote. A niche exhibition from a new artist may not have significant search volume, and prove to be a tricky match for search ads. Focusing instead on seasonal activity and longer-term offerings can be a better route, at least at first.
How to stay compliant with Google Ad Grants
The size of an Ad Grant opens them up to mis-use, which is why Google has a list of fairly strict policies that you have to meet.
You must have a clear account structure with at least two ad groups per campaign
Your conversion tracking must be meaningful – no counting of basic website visits! – and you need at least one conversion per month (if you’re not meeting that low bar, something has gone very wrong)
At least 2 sitelinks must be active in the account
The account click-through rate must pass a 5% minimum threshold (which is very easy to do)
Keywords need to have a quality score of 3 or higher and must not be single keywords or overly generic
Campaign should have geographically specific targeting, which for galleries will usually mean focusing on the venue location
Stray too far from these policies and you run the risk of having the account suspended, possibly permanently. Fortunately, these all represent best practice, so you’d likely want to be doing all of them anyway, even without Google’s watchful eye.
Getting results from your Google Ad Grant
Staying within the rules is one thing; getting good results is quite another.
We tend to see three types of organisation when it comes to Ad Grants:
Big spenders: usually nationally recognised, these orgs easily spend the full $10k budget every month. The challenge is in effectively directing the fire hose.
Monthly reliables: as long as these accounts have careful monthly maintenance, they have the potential to do very well and build up to a full $10k spend each month – but it won’t be immediate.
Super-niche: some organisations specialise in subjects that simply do not have significant search volume. There’s still lots of potential, but it’s going to require a lot of optimisation, lateral thinking and hard work.
Regardless of where your organisation sits, there are common tactics that apply across the board:
Embrace evergreen and long-term campaigns: search ads are expected to run for extended periods. Focus on broader campaigns that can keep going and be optimised over time, rather than short-run ads for specific exhibitions.
Keep a firm grip on Brand: especially if you’re one of those big spenders, it’s very easy to blow your entire budget on brand terms. Keep your brand keywords under control.
Use smart bidding: Ad Grants are capped at $2 on keyword bids, which can make it hard to compete. You can get around this by embracing smart bidding and trusting Google’s machine learning – which lifts the grant bid cap.
Dynamic targeting: if you have an online collection, dynamic search ads can be hugely powerful. You’ll have search ads for every single item in the collection, without having to manually create each one.
All the assets: search ads are built from lots of component parts. The more creative assets you provide Google with, the better your chances of having people click on your ads. That means sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, images – make use of them all.
Strong landing pages: it doesn’t matter how good your keywords are, or how precise your ad copy, if your landing pages drop the ball at the last moment. Google expects relevancy, and you want to make sure the call to action is clear and effective.
Patience: search ads are rarely instant wins. You’ll need to optimise and iterate, tweaking your keywords and copy over time. Think on a scale of weeks and months, not days.
Need more help?
There are many ways to wrangle a Google Ad Grant. You can DIY it in-house, or bring an agency on board to help.
We have an online course to get you quickly up to speed on How to run a successful Ad Grant. It covers everything you might want to know when setting up an Ad Grant, and you can study it at your own pace and from any device.
You can also work with us directly! Our hugely popular Ad Grant Jumpstart programme brings us in for three intensive months. We get your Ad Grant set up for success, then hand it back to you with a training session.
Many clients choose an ongoing management arrangement. It’s reassuring to be able to tick the Ad Grant off the long list of activities, so that the marketing and comms team can focus on other things. Even better, once they’re up and running, Ad Grants tend to easily pay for themselves.
Whatever you need for your Google Ad Grant, we can help. Get in touch and let’s have a chat.
