COVID-19 Google Ads Grants
Google is pledging over $800 million in grants including $340 M in Google ads credits for SMB’s
There might getting free ad credit from Google applied to your account.
Sundar Pichai the CEO of Google and Alphabet has pleaded over 800 M dollars to support small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB’s), health organisations and governments, and health workers on the front-line of this global pandemic. It has currently be broken down into the following
$340 million in Google Ads credits available to all SMBs with active accounts over the past year. Credits should start appearing in eligible accounts and can be used at any point until the end of 2020. A $200 million investment fund that will support non government organisations and financial institutions around the world to help provide small businesses with access to capital. $250 million in ad grants to help the World Health Organisation (WHO) and more than 100 government agencies globally provide critical information on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and other measures to help local communities.
COVID-19 FACEBOOK Grants For SMBs
Facebook is offering 100M US dollar in cash grants and ad credits to business that may be experiencing disruptions from the global outbreak of COVID -19. They have announced that they are going to select 30,000 eligible small businesses from over 30 countries where facebook operates. They have not announced how the system is going to work but they have given the following example of how the program can help
- Keep you workforce going strong
- Help with your rent costs
- Connect with more customers
- Cover operational costs
Facebook will begin taking applicants in the next few weeks and if you go to Facebook.com/business/boost/grants you can sign up for updates
New Rules for running Google ads during COVID-19
We have compiled Google new rules to make sure you don’t get caught up in the new COVD 19 filters
Google ads has pulled a lot of its phone support. There are messages over the whole system warning that some Google Ads support options might be delayed or unavailable at this time. I have found that getting more dynamic ad formats approved is hard at the moment. Text ads updates for me have been relatively unaffected.
Google has described the current situation as dynamic and recommends the following actions be careful around use of certain words. It recommends words like “protection”, “checkup”, “prevention” or “virus” might have double meanings. I would recommend not using any of these terms in any adcopy at the moment.
Google has also recommended that you consider your service delivery if products still can be collected in store and ask you to review your current estimated delivery times to ensure they accurately reflect your current capabilities.Google ads have also recommended that you review any media assets that you are currently using For example, think about the appropriateness of images and videos that show large gatherings of people or human interaction.
They have also recommended that if you business hours have changed or you have temporarily closed locations to reflect this data in your Google my business page .
In my opinion Google is being very clear about what it is and isn’t going to allow over this time period. It also seems that more of the verification is going to be done automatically and can in my experience be a little bit iffy so i recommend airing on the side of caution with any ad content at the moment
Running Facebook Ads During COVID-19
Facebook has implemented a number of changes and updates to how we can run ads during this time. It is worth knowing if you are planning or running campaigns that everyone is aware of limitations at this time
We have not noticed a big change in speed or accuracy of ads approvals but they have messaged saying that there may be delays and errors in ad reviews.
Rob Leathern (lead of the Trust & Integrity team for ads & business products at Facebook has announced that due to a reduced workforce of ad and monetized content auditors Facebook will be relying on more automated technology, this may lead to increase numbers of incorrectly disapproved ads, delays to appeals and more limited availability of Facebook in-stream ads and lower delivery .
It is recommended that more time be allowed for these approvals to take place and where possible extend live ads don’t edit until new ads have been approved.. Basically if you have an ad and it is working don’t touch it!
There has been a total ban on masks, hand sanitizer, surface disinfecting wipes and COVID-19 test kits in ads and commerce listings.
Store traffic campaigns are temporarily been disabled. This means that you cant currently create any new ads with the store traffic objective, and store traffic objective campaigns that were running have now been paused. You cant optimize existing ads for store sales or store visits. You can however still view your store visits and store sales results in ads manager and review data from previously live campaigns
Is YouTube is building a TikTok rival?
It has been leaked that YouTube is reportedly working on a TikTok rival called Shorts to be introduced by the end of 2020. The new feature will be part of the YouTube app.
In the last couple of weeks engagement stats across many social channels is going through the roof at the moment with reports of TikTok accounts seeing a 76% increase in interactions.
The china based company has already seen more than 700 million downloads. Interestingly it has been reported that the US army & navy have banned Tiktok from government phones amist security concerns.
The new shorts feature is meant to also make use of all the music that Google currently owns with sound being allowed to be used as a soundtrack for video creators it has speculated. YouTube has not commented on this new developments