Oil Disaster Highlights Competitive Keyword Landscape

The BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is now having effects on advocacy groups operating keyword campaigns on Google. Several of our non-profit clients are campaigning to raise awareness about the environmental impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak. A key platform for driving awareness for these clients is Google’s in-kind advertising platform - Google Grant. The Google Grant operates on the same Adwords platform as commercial clients with a few restrictions for organizations with 501(c)(3) status. One of the larger restrictions, especially when competing for words that are in high demand, is a $1.00 cost-per-click (CPC) cap. With BP’s large PR budget they are effectively able to rise to the top of the search results by bidding far beyond the reach of advocacy groups. Read more about BP’s aggressive keyword PR campaign here.