Performance Max and Google Maps Placements: What Changed in Google Ad Grants This Year

For most of the program's history, a Google Ad Grants account could do one thing: show text ads on Google Search. That has changed. Google now allows Performance Max campaigns and eligible Google Maps placements in Ad Grants accounts, and most accounts built before the change have never turned either on.

That is unused capability sitting next to unused budget. Here is what changed, what the grant version can and cannot do, and how to add it without putting the rest of the account at risk.

What Performance Max is, in plain terms

A Search campaign waits for someone to type a keyword you chose. Performance Max works from goals instead. You give it a conversion goal, such as donations or volunteer sign-ups, a set of assets such as headlines and descriptions, and audience signals that describe the people you want to reach. Google then decides which searches and placements to show your ads on, and adjusts as it learns what produces the goal. Google's own Ad Grants campaign setup guidance notes that a new Performance Max campaign runs through a learning period while its bid strategy optimizes on the inputs you provide.

For a grant account this solves a specific problem. Many nonprofits run out of keyword volume: the searches that describe their mission are too few to spend the daily budget. Performance Max can find related searches and intent a keyword list would miss, which is why accounts that were stuck at a fraction of the award often move after adding it. Our article on why most of the Ad Grants budget goes unspent lists limited keyword volume as the first cause.

How the grant version differs from the paid one

Commercial advertisers running Performance Max reach the whole of Google's inventory, including YouTube, Display, Gmail, and Discover. The Ad Grants version does not. Grant Performance Max campaigns serve on Google Search and eligible Google Maps placements, and nowhere else. That removes the cross-channel reach paid advertisers value most, but it keeps the campaign inside the program's purpose: reaching people who are already looking. Ad Grants Search campaigns likewise run only on eligible Search inventory; Google's setup guidance has you deselect search partners and the Display Network.

The rule it does not have to meet

Performance Max campaigns in Ad Grants accounts run outside the 5 percent click-through requirement. They do not raise or lower the account average that Search campaigns are held to. That makes them safer to add than another broad Search campaign, but it does not relax anything else. Your Search campaigns still have to hold the line on their own, and the full rules are in the 5 percent click-through rule.

Performance Max is not a shortcut around the rules. It is a second engine that runs on the same fuel: real conversions, tracked properly.

What it needs before it works

• Conversion tracking that records real actions. Performance Max is goal-based. If the goal is a page view, it will find page views. Set it to donations, sign-ups, forms, and calls, and confirm they record before launch. See the conversion tracking requirement.
• Assets worth showing. Headlines and descriptions that name the program, the place, and the action. Weak assets produce weak placements.
• Audience signals. Describe the people you serve or the donors who fund you. Signals guide the learning; they do not restrict it.
• One asset group per program or location. A shelter network with four sites does better with four asset groups than one generic campaign.
• Patience through the learning period. Judge it on conversions after several weeks, not on the first few days.

Whether your account has Performance Max available, and whether it is set up to find the right people, is part of what our audit reads. Tell us where to look and our team writes back within one business day. Get your written audit.

Google Maps placements, and who they help

Maps placements matter to organizations people visit: food pantries, clinics, shelters, community centers, houses of worship, thrift stores that fund a mission. When someone searches for that kind of help nearby, a Maps placement puts the organization on the map result with directions and hours. Maps placements draw on the organization's location information, so a complete and verified Google Business Profile, linked to the Ads account, is the prerequisite. Our article on Google Business Profile for nonprofits covers that setup. Organizations without a public location gain little here and should put the effort into Search and Performance Max instead.

How to add it without breaking what works

Keep Search as the base. It is the part of the account you control keyword by keyword, and it is where the compliance rules live. Add one Performance Max campaign for the program with the least keyword volume, with its own daily budget carved from the 329 dollars a day the award provides. Give it several weeks. Compare its conversions and its cost per conversion with the Search campaigns. If it earns its budget, expand it by asset group; if it produces traffic without actions, tighten the goal and the assets before adding money. Review its search categories and placements monthly the way you review a Search Terms report, so it does not drift toward searches your mission cannot serve.

Questions nonprofits ask about Performance Max and Maps

Will Performance Max show our ads on YouTube?

Not in an Ad Grants account. Grant Performance Max campaigns serve on Search and eligible Maps placements only.

Does it need the same conversion tracking?

Yes, and it depends on it more than Search does, because it has no keyword list to fall back on. Real conversion actions are the whole input.

Can it replace our Search campaigns?

It should not. Search gives you control and carries the compliance rules; Performance Max adds reach. Accounts that run both, with Search as the base, get the benefit of each.

We have no physical location. Is Maps useful to us?

Rarely. Put the effort into Search and Performance Max, and revisit Maps if you open a site people can visit.

Find out what your account has not turned on

Campaign types nobody enabled are one of the easiest things an audit finds and one of the cheapest to fix. Tell us where to look and within one business day you will have a written audit: whether you qualify, what is unused, what puts the account at risk, and the first thing to fix. No meeting required, no pitch, no obligation. Get your Google Ad Grants audit, or call (313) 364-8828.

Zoya Syal is Content and Production Manager at Nonprofits Engine, where she leads the content and testimonial work for a team that helps small nonprofits get set up and funded.