Just over a week ago, Facebook announced that they would offer a helping hand for up to 30,000 small businesses by offering $100m in cash grants and ad credits for paid social on their platform. Last week Google also announced that they will be committing $340m in PPC and display ad credits for small and medium business with the aim to “alleviate some of the costs to stay in touch with their customers” in response to the Covid-19 crisis.
Google has stated that eligible advertisers will begin to see notifications about available ad credits in their Google Ads accounts over the next few months. The credits can be used throughout 2020 on ads across the Google Network, including Search, Display and YouTube.
Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, wrote a blog post that announced that Google would spend over $800 million to support small businesses during the crisis. This includes a $250 million ad grant to help the World Health Organisation (WHO) and over 100 government agencies across the globe to provide critical information on how to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and other measures to help local communities.
The blog post also mentioned that Google would include a $200 million investment fund that will support NGOs and financial institutions to provide small businesses with access to capital and in addition will provide direct financial support and expertise to help increase the production capacity for personal protective equipment (PPE).