Educational Multimedia Project: From Zero to 214 Conversions
$10,000 Google Ad Grant budget, 0 to 214 conversions in 30 days
Client & Context
An educational multimedia project based in the US, focused on raising awareness about nuclear threats and climate change. The engagement goal was efficient use of a $10,000/month Google Ads (Grant) budget, targeting a primary "Subscribe-Submission" conversion, with a minimum bar of at least one macro-conversion per day during the initial period.
Starting Point — 13 May 2024
Cost: $0. Total Conversions: 0. "Subscribe-Submission" Conversion: 0 — a genuine cold start with no existing account history.
Stage One: Teaching the Algorithm
- Created a 30-second-on-site micro-conversion, needed so the system could learn and gather data — this micro-conversion gave the algorithm a working definition of what a relevant user looks like, which ads led to quality site visits, and which audiences were inclined to engage.
- Added a second ad to the existing Search campaign's ad groups, as required under Google Ads Grant policy (a minimum of two ads per ad group).
- Created an automated rule to pause low-quality keywords.
- Launched a DSA (Dynamic Search Ads) campaign to surface relevant pages the team hadn't explicitly targeted with keywords yet.
Within the first week, the grant account began spending $150/day and generating daily micro-conversions — such as 30-second site visits and news reads — plus 9 Subscribe-Submission conversions.
Stage Two: Following the Data
- Monitored actual relevant search queries with an eye toward building additional ad groups from them within the Search campaign.
- Created 8 new ad groups for the Search campaign, sourcing keywords from real search queries, the keyword planner, and previously paused test campaigns — preserving the relevant terms users had actually searched to find the site, which could drive meaningful conversion volume long-term.
- Expanded existing ad groups with additional keywords matching their theme.
- Reduced the Search campaign's budget to free up spend for the DSA campaign, which was generating the more valuable conversions.
- Added new images to each individual ad group, matched to its specific theme.
- Paused keywords and older ad groups that generated significant traffic but no conversions.
By the second week, the Search campaign began generating more primary conversions than DSA — driven specifically by the new ad groups tied to nuclear-weapons themes, some of which sent users directly to a nuclear-bomb simulator page on the site.
30-day "Subscribe-Submission" split by campaign: Search Campaign — 26 conversions, DSA Campaign — 24 conversions.
What Didn't Work
Among the ad groups created for the Search campaign were several focused on climate change, ocean pollution, and species extinction. This content existed in volume on the site and users genuinely searched for it via Outrider — but analysis showed the overwhelming majority of macro-conversions came from queries tied to nuclear weapons or nuclear safety specifically. That data point directly shaped the optimization decisions that followed — budget and structural focus shifted toward the nuclear-themed content that was actually converting, rather than the climate content that was merely generating traffic.
Results — 11 June 2024
| Metric | 13 May 2024 | 11 June 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $0 | $10,000 |
| Total Conversions | 0 | 214 |
| "Subscribe-Submission" | 0 | 50 |
Conclusion
Over the 30-day period, the client was satisfied with both the implemented strategy and the results achieved. The winning combination was a DSA campaign deliberately split into "Nuclear" and "Other without Nuclear" groups — which let the team isolate exactly which topic converted — paired with a continuously expanded and re-targeted Search campaign built from real user search behavior rather than assumptions made at launch.
