Some Nonprofits Found AI Max Turned On in Their Ad Grants. Check Yours This Week.

You know that feeling when you open an account you haven’t touched in months and find a setting you never chose? It’s like finding a stranger’s toothbrush in your bathroom. Somebody was here, and nobody asked you.

Some nonprofits say they had that feeling this month with their Google Ad Grant. I want you to check yours on purpose, before it happens to you.

What was reported

On October 19, Search Engine Land ran a story titled “Google Ads AI Max spotted automatically enabled in some Ad Grants accounts.” A day earlier, PPC Newsfeed said the same thing: advertisers were finding AI Max switched on in some Ad Grants campaigns without anyone opting in.

Two caveats, because I’d rather you hear them from me. This is “some accounts,” not all of them. And I couldn’t find a Google statement confirming a program-wide change.

There’s also a plausible explanation that has nothing to do with nonprofits specifically. Google’s own announcement says campaigns using campaign-level broad match or automatically created assets are being upgraded to AI Max, with settings meant to mirror what you had before. Maybe that’s what people saw. I don’t know. Neither do you. That’s the point of checking.

What AI Max actually does

Per Google’s help page, AI Max is an optimization layer on top of a regular Search campaign. It bundles three things:

• Search term matching: broad match plus “keywordless” technology, so your ads can show on searches that aren’t your keywords.
• Text customization: Google writes ad copy from your ads, landing pages and assets using generative AI.
• Final URL expansion: Google can send people to a page other than the one you picked.

Google also says new Search campaigns have AI Max turned on by default. Existing campaigns are opt-in, in theory.

Why an ED should care

Ad Grants gives eligible nonprofits up to $10,000 a month in in-kind search advertising. You don’t pay for it, so nobody watches it like a budget. That’s exactly why a default matters here.

Here’s the part that stings. The program has a rule: a 5% click-through rate every month, and miss it two months in a row and the account gets deactivated until you fix it. (Smart campaigns are exempt.)

Now picture this: your grant has been quietly humming along on a tight set of keywords for your programs. A feature gets switched on that lets Google match you to searches you never chose and rewrite your ad copy. Does your CTR go up? Down? Who’s checking?

My opinion: broader matching tends to pull in looser traffic, and looser traffic tends to click less. I can’t promise that’s what happens in your account. I just don’t want you finding out from a deactivation email.

The 5-minute check

Sign in at ads.google.com with your Google for Nonprofits email, then:

1. Go to Campaigns, then Settings. Click into a Search campaign.
2. Pick AI Max in the section menu (that’s the path in Google’s setup doc; screens shift, so look around if yours differs).
3. See whether it’s on, and which of the three features are. Google says you can toggle them off individually.
4. Repeat for every Search campaign. It’s a per-campaign setting.
5. While you’re there, glance at your account CTR for the last two months.

Keep it or kill it?

I’d kill it, or at least pause it, if your CTR is hovering near 5%, if your keywords are tightly tied to specific programs, or if your landing pages are different on purpose (a donate page is not a volunteer page).

I’d consider keeping it if your CTR has real breathing room, your site is clear and well organized, and someone will actually review the search terms every month. Turn on one feature at a time, not all three.

The real answer is that it’s a decision, and a decision should have a name next to it. “Google did it” is not a name.

Same movie, different theater

If this feels familiar, it should. In September I wrote about Cloudflare making an AI decision for you, and earlier I admitted I’d been under-using my own Cloudflare account. Different vendor, same pattern: the default is somebody else’s choice, and it’s your site or your grant on the line.

It also matters where those ad clicks go. If you’re sending grant traffic to a site that’s slow or confusing, you’re wasting free money. The same goes for a membership or donor pitch that’s buried. (I wrote about that for arts organizations and their members.)

One soft plug, since it’s what we do: keeping an eye on this stuff is part of what a WordPress maintenance plan is for. Somebody watching the store while you run the mission.

So, did you find AI Max on in your account? Tell me whether you kept it or killed it. I’m genuinely curious which way people go.