Anastasia Braitsik is a powerhouse in the digital marketing world, recognized for her deep dives into data analytics and SEO strategies that bridge the gap between virtual engagement and real-world results. As a global leader in content marketing, she has spent years helping organizations navigate the complexities of search engine advertising to find their most valuable audiences. Today, she joins us to discuss a pivotal update in the Google Ad Grants landscape: the newfound ability for nonprofit organizations to optimize their campaigns for physical shop visits. This change marks a significant turning point for location-based entities, allowing them to finally align their digital budgets with the tangible human impact they create on the ground.
In this conversation, we explore the strategic shift from prioritizing website traffic to measuring physical foot traffic, particularly for cultural and community-driven institutions. We examine the technical steps required to activate these new features in legacy accounts and how visibility in Maps-based discovery is becoming a primary competitive advantage. Finally, we look ahead at how this integration of local intent will redefine success for nonprofits in an increasingly mobile-first world.
Nonprofit organizations can now set shop visits as an account-level goal within their grant accounts. How does this transition from prioritizing website traffic to physical foot traffic change a museum’s bidding strategy, and what specific campaign messaging adjustments are necessary to drive these in-person visits?
When a museum shifts its focus to shop visits, the bidding strategy moves away from simply capturing eyeballs toward capturing footsteps. In the past, we might have bid aggressively on broad educational terms to drive traffic to a blog post, but now the algorithm can prioritize users whose proximity and search history suggest they are ready to walk through those physical doors. This requires a much more localized bidding approach, where we value a user standing five miles away much more highly than someone browsing from another state. The messaging must evolve as well; instead of “Learn more about our history,” the call to action needs to be “Visit us today” or “Experience the exhibit in person.” By weaving in sensory details about the gallery atmosphere and the immediacy of the experience, we can turn a digital click into a vibrant, real-world connection.
Prioritizing visibility in Maps and location-driven search results allows local organizations to better target nearby audiences. What specific steps should a community center take to optimize their account for these placements, and how can they differentiate between a simple digital click and a meaningful offline mission impact?
For a community center, the neighborhood is their heartbeat, and appearing in Maps-based results is the most direct way to reach their neighbors. The first step is to ensure that the Google Business Profile is perfectly synced with the Ad Grants account and that location extensions are fully operational. By selecting shop visits as a primary goal, the center allows Google’s AI to identify patterns in behavior that lead to a person actually entering the building. This is a massive leap forward because a simple click on a website might just be someone checking hours, whereas a recorded shop visit represents a person attending a support group or a local workshop. It transforms the data from abstract numbers into a measurable record of community service, proving that the digital ad spend is directly fueling the organization’s social mission.
Technical restrictions that previously triggered errors when selecting store visits as a goal have been lifted for eligible accounts. When reviewing a legacy account, what indicators confirm this feature is active, and what step-by-step process should a manager follow to ensure their primary goal configuration is correctly aligned?
For years, digital managers were met with frustrating error messages if they even tried to tick the box for store visits, but that era of technical restriction is finally over. When you log into a legacy account today, the primary indicator of eligibility is the presence of “shop visits” as an active, selectable option within the conversion settings without the previous warning icons. To align the configuration, a manager should first verify their location assets are verified and then navigate to the account-level goals to include store visits in the primary conversion set. Once enabled, they need to transition their bidding strategies—moving from “Maximize Clicks” to “Maximize Conversions”—to ensure the system is hunting for physical visits rather than just site explorers. It is a meticulous process of auditing old settings to ensure they aren’t still optimized for the limitations of the past.
What is your forecast for Google Ad Grants?
I forecast that Google Ad Grants will continue to evolve into a tool that mirrors the sophisticated, local-first capabilities of commercial accounts, with an even heavier emphasis on hyper-local intent. We are moving toward a future where the distinction between an online interaction and an offline action becomes almost invisible, as Google continues to prioritize Maps-based discovery and real-world behavior. Nonprofits will likely gain access to even more advanced AI-driven tools that can predict which community members are most likely to become long-term donors or volunteers based on their physical engagement patterns. Ultimately, the program will become less about “search” in the traditional sense and more about “discovery,” helping organizations stay relevant in a world where the most important interactions happen face-to-face in our own neighborhoods.
