Google Ads is apparently willing to pay you to spend more money with Google.
The platform is currently offering some existing advertisers up to $3,250 in ad credits if they increase their advertising budgets.
The message is pretty direct:
“Your clients are currently missing out on their busiest hours due to budget limits.”
Google’s recommendation? Increase the budget to capture that missed demand—and Google will help “invest in their growth” with up to $3,250 in free ad credit.
It’s a clever promotion.
It’s also a pretty good reminder of whose interests Google is ultimately optimizing for.
What This Means for Law Firms
Being limited by budget can absolutely be a legitimate problem.
If a law firm’s Search campaigns are consistently hitting their daily budgets, losing impression share because of budget, and generating qualified leads at a profitable cost, there may be a strong case for spending more.
But “limited by budget” does not automatically mean “increase the budget.”
Google is naturally going to identify additional opportunities to spend. The more important question for a law firm is whether those additional opportunities are actually worth buying.
For example, if a personal injury firm is capturing most of the valuable searches in its market but Google identifies thousands of additional impressions that could be purchased, that doesn’t necessarily mean those impressions will produce additional cases at the same quality or cost.
The same applies to Google’s reference to a client’s “busiest hours.” More available searches during certain hours doesn’t inherently make those searches more valuable.
Law firms need to look at what happens after the click.
Are those additional searches producing qualified calls? Are the leads turning into viable cases? Is the incremental cost justified by the revenue those cases can generate?
Those are much more important questions than whether Google says there’s additional demand available.
Our Take
We have to give Google credit for the creativity here.
“You’re running out of budget, so spend more. And we’ll give you some money to help you spend more.”
It’s not exactly a surprising incentive from the company that makes money when advertisers increase their spending.
And to be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with taking the credit.
If a campaign is genuinely constrained by budget and the data supports increasing spend, $3,250 in free ad credits is $3,250 in free ad credits. We’ll happily use it.
But the promotion shouldn’t be what determines the budget.
Google has a very different definition of “growth” than a law firm does.
For Google, growth can mean more impressions, more clicks, and more advertising spend.
For a law firm, growth means more qualified cases at a cost that makes economic sense.
Those two things can absolutely overlap—but they aren’t always the same thing.
And that’s why we wouldn’t increase a client’s budget simply because Google tells us they’re missing out on demand.
If the additional demand is valuable, let’s capture it. If it’s not, $3,250 isn’t going to change that.
What ADSQUIRE Is Doing
When a client receives an offer like this, we’re looking at the campaign data before recommending any budget increase.
That includes:
- How much impression share is actually being lost to budget
- Which searches are driving the additional available demand
- Cost per qualified lead
- Search-term quality
- Conversion and lead quality
- Whether additional spend is producing incremental cases
- Whether performance remains efficient at higher spend levels
If the numbers support increasing the budget, we’ll take advantage of Google’s credit.
If they don’t, we’ll keep the budget where it makes sense for the client.
Because free ad credits are great. Wasting the client’s money isn’t.
Conclusion
Google offering existing advertisers up to $3,250 in credits to increase their budgets is an interesting promotion—and an even more interesting reminder of how Google thinks about growth.
There may be real incremental demand worth capturing, particularly for campaigns that are genuinely budget-constrained and already performing well.
But Google’s recommendation to spend more should be treated as a data point, not a directive.
Take the credit when the opportunity is there. Just make sure the opportunity is actually worth paying for.
