Back in March Google announced on their official blog that they would be giving $800+ million to help support a variety of organisations navigate the Covid-19 crisis. Of those funds, $340 million of Google Ads credits would automatically be applied to SMBs with accounts that have been active over the past year ( https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/commitment-support-small-businesses-and-crisis-response-covid-19/).
Surprisingly it appears that New Zealand is the first country in the world to start seeing the benefit of the credits roll out. Pure SEO started seeing the credits appear in our clients' accounts yesterday, coupled with the following emails from Google:
As of Friday 29th May, we saw 183 of our client accounts have credits applied to them in various amounts ranging from $130 to $1,080, with the vast majority of accounts (including our own) seeing $400 in credits.
We have reached out to Google directly to see if they will elaborate on how the amounts are being worked out and which accounts will benefit from the credits. We already know that to be eligible for the credits a business needs to have been running a Google Ads campaign for at least 10 of 12 months in 2019 and either January or February in 2020.
This roll outcomes quickly after the launch of new Google My Business features to help SMBs navigate through the Covid-19 crises (Google My Business Updates).