The AdWords Billing Tab: What does it mean for Grantees?

"I thought the Grants program was free AdWords advertising. Why does my account say I have balance??"

This is a common question we receive from grantees since seeing costs and an account balance in your AdWords account can be confusing. As such, I thought I would take a moment to clarify how Grantees should view the Billing tab in their AdWords accounts.

First and foremost, Google Grants recipients are not charged for their AdWords accounts and will never accrue an outstanding balance. Because Google Grants advertisers share the same interface as paying AdWords advertisers, you will see certain features and options that do not pertain to Google Grants accounts (i.e. the Billing tab).

Clicking on the Billing tab in your AdWords account takes you to the Billing Summary page. This page aggregates billing information for our paying advertisers, listing the following billing categories: Last Payment, Primary Payment Method, and Current Balance. For a Grantee account, the Last Payment and Primary Payment method will be set to 'None'. The Current Balance is a running total of the amount your account has accrued in free advertising. Again, for Grantees, this is not an amount owed or a balance due.

Want to know the in-kind value of your Grants account over a given period of time?

You can view the Current Balance on the Billing Summary page as the amount your online advertising on Google.com would have cost if you were not receiving free ads through your Google Grant. Therefore, you can look at this amount as monetary value of your Google Grants award.

An example Grantee Billing Summary page:




Posted by AnnMarie Hill, The Google Grants Team