Which campaign and ad types the grant allows

Ad Grants is not a full Google Ads account. The program allows Search campaigns — text ads in search results — and, since 2024, Performance Max. Display, Video and Shopping are out.

Ad types: responsive only

Expanded text ads are gone. They were replaced by responsive search ads, they are no longer supported, and an old text ad left in an account simply does not serve. If an ad group has nothing but legacy text ads, it produces no impressions at all — and because each ad group needs at least one active ad, that group is also breaking the policy.

Fill a responsive ad with all 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. Not because the copy will lift your click-through rate — we measured 61,669 ads and the text explains 2.7% of CTR variation — but because Google's Ad Strength rating is essentially a count of filled fields, and because more headlines give the system more combinations to match against queries. "Poor" ads in our data have a median of 11 headlines; everything rated higher has 15.

Performance Max in the grant

PMax is the strongest single reach lever once the $2 bid cap is gone. Accounts running it spend 4.2× more and collect 3.0× more clicks; switching it on for an account that did not have it is worth a median of +$721 of monthly spend.

There was a claim that in the grant PMax only ever runs on Search. We checked, and it holds more strongly than we expected. Across grant accounts, Search took 25.06M impressions (CTR 5.19%), Maps 709k (CTR 0.30%), and 739k landed in a combined "multiple networks" bucket. In proportions: 94.5% Search, 2.8% the combined bucket, 2.7% Maps. Not one impression went to the Display Network, YouTube or Discover — not "few", zero, across every account and the whole history.

One number to know before switching it on: the click-through rate of all Performance Max on grant accounts is 5.05%, which sits exactly on the policy threshold and crosses it in both directions depending on the month. That is not a reason to avoid PMax. It is a reason to switch it on for an account that already has a buffer above 5%, because PMax adds no buffer of its own.

Which campaign themes actually work

Of five campaign themes the sector treats as equivalent, only two really differ. Local campaigns win against every other theme — a phrase with a city or region in it starts twice as often as any other, 11.9% against 5.3–6.4%, and inside the same account local groups win 64% of comparisons. Fundraising campaigns lose to every other theme: 2.8% of their keywords start. Service, informational and brand campaigns are indistinguishable from one another.

And the best theme is the least used. Only 45% of organizations run local campaigns, while 47% advertise donations — more organizations advertise giving than advertise their own neighbourhood.