Carbon Copy: Maximising Google Ad Grant Value (2025)

Carbon Copy is a UK-based charity with a goal of engaging one million people locally in UK climate action by 2030. They curate a national collection of climate action stories and place-by-place climate and nature plans from across the UK. They also provide capacity building for organisations across public, private and third sectors.

Carbon Copy wanted to make better use of their Google Ad Grant account, which had struggled to fully utilise the available monthly budget. Crucially, they did not want to increase spend by targeting low-intent keywords. Instead, the focus was on driving meaningful website engagement, particularly with their climate action stories and podcast.

• We began by agreeing clear annual priorities and restructuring the account to align campaign activity with Carbon Copy’s objectives.
• We reviewed and enhanced conversion tracking to capture not only end point actions, but also key engagement touchpoints across the user journey. This allowed us to optimise towards meaningful interactions rather than simply traffic volume.
• Throughout the year, we tested new features introduced to the Google Ad Grant programme, including AI Max and Performance Max campaigns. Performance Max proved particularly effective and quickly became a core part of the account strategy.
• During the holiday period, we secured additional funding from Google to expand spend at the end of the year.
• As performance data developed, we continuously monitored budget allocation and conversion performance, making ongoing optimisations to ensure we maximised both spend efficiency and engagement quality.