Google Ad Grants – News

17/12/25

The Grant scheme CTR increase we saw last month was short-lived – CTR is has dropped rapidly in the last couple weeks, driven mainly by PMax campaigns, which have declined 30% in CTR.

But non-PMax CTR has also dropped, in both 2x and non-budget-boosted accounts.

The increase in average CPC is almost entirely due to 2x budget accounts – although non-budget-boosted are also high CPC.

To recap what trends we’ve observed this year:

Overall click traffic has been gradually recovering since April.
Spring 2025 marked a peak in average CPC this year.
CPC remains above $2, but Performance Max has helped offset this.

By using aggressive bidding on traditionally lower-volume days (hello weekends 👋), we’ve managed to stretch budgets further – although traffic hasn’t quite returned to early-year levels yet.

01/12/25

We have been seeing some interesting trends in the Google Grant Scheme as of late, but arguably the most intriguing has been the CTR growth seen over the past few weeks. In November alone, the average CTR across our accounts had risen by around 2% – the most significant CTR trend that we have seen since the great collapse of Sep – Oct 2024, where CTR dropped by over 5% in many accounts.

As seen in the graph above, this trend is being seen across both Standard and Performance Max campaigns, strongly suggesting that external factors could be behind these changes.

Another long-term trend of interest we have seen is a gradual recovery of overall click traffic since April. After all, Spring 2025 marked a peak when it came to average CPC for the Grant scheme as a whole (disregarding periods of increased budget that is).

Although average CPC has remained comfortably above $2, we have been leveraging the aggressive bidding of Performance Max campaigns to spend more budget on days that tend to struggle with search volume, like weekends. By doing so, we have mitigated some of the reductions brought on by CPC inflation, but are still not quite seeing the numbers we were at the start of this year.

07/07/2025

At first glance, Ad Grants performance in June looks to be finally on the way up, but it’s really more a recovery to the level of April’s performance. It’s important to remember that the last week of May (bank holiday & half-term) was generally very poor.

CTR did increase to around 8% with impressions, remaining fairly steady. This could be related to ads appearing in AI Overviews, but this is unconfirmed and it’s more likely due to a recovery post-half term.

CPC saw relatively consistent decreases since the end of May, but overall did not see a huge fall as a result of half-term week seeing a large spike. Average CPC remains persistently above $2.

01/05/2025

All things considered, April 2025 was the worst month of all time for Ad Grants accounts across the board. Clicks have fallen to an all-time low, continuing the downward trend they’ve followed since Spring 2021.

The cause of this decline? Rising CPC, due to increased bid competition as Google increasingly allows accounts to bid over $2. (There may also be some more underhanded artificial bid inflation at play, but Google have understandably not confirmed that.)

Average CPC has risen from $2 to $2.50 in 2 months. That’s by far the biggest jump above $2 we’ve seen outside of an increased budget period, and marks the highest CPC of all time in Grants outside of December’s increased budget.

This is the latest step in the rising CPC trend that’s been present in the Grants scheme since 2018. Since then, CPC has more than tripled. Which means, if you’re running your account well and maxing out your budget, you’re garnering less than a third of the clicks now than you would have 7 years ago, for the same spend.

Impressions have taken a tumble, too – the second lowest they’ve ever been, closely behind August 2024. We did see an increase in impressions in the last week of the month as the holidays ended, but the overall trend over the last two months is one of consistent decline.

Given that average CPC is now reliably above the $2 bid limit, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Google increase that threshold for automated bidding at least.

01/04/25

Up until mid-February, both impressions and clicks were rising, but impressions were rising faster than clicks so the CTR was dropping. However, since the week of the 17th, this trend has inverted.

Now, clicks and impressions are decreasing, but impressions are decreasing faster than clicks so CTR is rising.

This is, much like the opposite trend, a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we might have averted falling into a CTR-based hell, but at the end of the day traffic is dropping off.

Why has this happened? Well, 17th of Feb was the start of half-term in the UK, so that week could be due to the holidays, but the 23rd was not and yet the trend continued, so we believe this is NOT a seasonal trend.

Again, the most logical hypothesis is that this is a system change on Google’s end. Hopefully that means that the trend remains stable…

01/03/25

CTRs across Google Ad Grants have never been lower.

We’ve been tracking the clickthrough rate across our clients’ Grants closely over the last few months. The graph below shows the average CTR of every account we have access to over the last 4 years.

As you can see, in February average CTR is beginning to reach 6.5%. The Grant policies contain an account wide 5% CTR requirement across an account’s non-Performance Max campaigns, and we are rapidly approaching this becoming a real challenge for some accounts.

So, what can Ad Grants users do to avoid this?

We have several potential actions we can take to avoid dropping below the 5% threshold. In the past we would pause the lower CTR keywords in the account, allowing the account average to rise over 5%. This would lead to a drop in traffic but would keep the account compliant.

Recently, Google brought Performance Max (Pmax) campaigns to Google Ad Grants. These new, more automated campaigns are not required to achieve a 5% CTR to remain compliant. Because of this, we can also replace low CTR campaigns with Pmax equivalents, allowing us to still serve ads to these pages.

If this trend continues, it will become a significant factor in how Grants have to be managed.

Google is yet to explain the root causes of the freefall. But we’ll keep you posted in the coming weeks as we learn more.

21/03/23

The Google Ad Grants scheme has gone through many big changes and unprecedented challenges in the last 3 years. It’s weathered the COVID pandemic, seen the rise of Responsive Search Ads, and has adapted to the removal of broad match modifiers.

So, what impact has this had on Google Ad Grants data trends and performance of the scheme as a whole?

Our in-house data analytics expert, Dan Biggs, has reviewed data from 40 Google Ad Grants accounts under our umbrella, and has highlighted some key insights for charities to take note of. You can read his full report on the current and future trends of the Ad Grants Scheme here.