To help small and medium-sized businesses overcome the challenges created by COVID-19, Google is giving its SMB customers $340 million in ad credits. These credits can be applied to future ad spend across Google Ads platforms until the end of 2020. This credit is a small part of Google’s larger plan to support small businesses and crisis response.
It is no surprise that COVID-19 has posed challenges for many small and medium-sized businesses. Many have faced declining revenues and closures. Google’s ad credit is the company’s way of supporting these businesses as they continue to try and reach out to their customers.
To qualify for the ad credit, you will need to be a small to medium-sized business that has spent with a Google Ads account in ten out of the twelve months in 2019 and in January and or February of 2020. Your business will have needed to advertise directly with Google Ads or through a partner as well as have adhered to Google’s advertising policies. Google has a global team that consults and supports the needs of these businesses around the world. The ad credits will be supporting these businesses.
Each eligible Google customer will receive one ad credit. This ad credit is for future Google Ads spend. Businesses can not apply this credit to past bills/invoices, nor current Google Ads spend. This ad credit will be applicable across Search, Display, and YouTube. Google will begin to roll the credit out in late May. Over the following months, eligible businesses will be notified and will see the credit applied to their account. The ad credit amount will vary by customer based on past Google spend as well as the country and currency where the account is set up. If this ad credit is not used by December 31, 2020, any unused portion will be removed from your account.
Keep an eye out for more details around the Google Ad credit as it is released.