Google Adwords is a marketing service that provides the opportunity for advertisers to promote their products or services to people who are already searching online for them via Google’s Search Engine. This is accomplished by the placement of ads above and below the list of search results that are visible when people search with Google.
Advertisers pay when Internet searchers click on the ads. This is known as Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC).
The Google AdWords platform allows advertisers to target specific geographical areas, including locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.
Google’s text advertisements are short and quick to read. There are also image ads available via Adwords, which can be different sizes, as determined by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standards. (However, Google Ad Grants is only for text ads.)
The ad displays are triggered by the keywords that online searchers are using.
Google AdWords provides advertisers the opportunity to set a daily budget for advertising. The ads continue to be displayed online throughout the day until the budget is expended. Or, if the budget is large enough and there are not enough clicks, the daily budget is simply not fully utilized.
When using AdWords, keywords are fundamental to determine the cost of advertising. Each keyword selected will have a Cost-Per-Click (CPC) bid amount. The bids specify the maximum amount the advertiser is willing to pay each time someone clicks the ad. A higher CPC bid can allow the ad to show at a higher position on the page, which makes the ad more visible.
In other words, advertisers can use the Google AdWords platform to create ads that are relevant to the keywords that people are using to search on Google. Again, these ads appear at the top and/or below the Google natural search results. When users click on any of these ads, they are taken to the advertisers’ website.
In brief, Google Ad Grants is a scaled down version of Google Adwords.
Nonprofit organizations can take advantage of free use of the Google Adwords platform by way of the Google Ad Grants program, which provides a $10,000 per month Google Adwords budget for no cost to qualified nonprofits.