"You earned ad credit" from Google Ads: what is the catch?

How the offers work

Google hands out promotional offers by email or on the Promotions page of the account. There are 2 families:

• New advertiser offers: for accounts using Google Ads for the first time. Usually: spend a set amount, get a set amount of credit.
• Existing advertiser offers: for current or returning advertisers. They can ask you to spend on a specific campaign type, complete an action, or both.

In the r/googleads thread this week, one advertiser's £1,250 offer was tied to Demand Gen campaigns, while another had to spend 3,000 USD in 28 days to get 6,000 USD. Same kind of email, very different deals.

The rules that matter

• The credit cannot pay for the spend requirement itself, and it cannot cover costs from before it was applied.
• After you meet the requirement, the credit can take up to 35 days to appear.
• Once added, you typically have 60 days to spend it.

The real catch: ads keep running

Google's help says it for automatic payments: your ads will continue to run and accrue costs after your promotional credit has been used up, charged to your payment method. On monthly invoicing the costs just appear on the next invoice. On manual payments the ads stop when the prepaid money runs out.

So the risk is not a hidden fee. It is raising budgets to hit a threshold you would not have spent anyway, then forgetting the campaign.

Before you accept

1. Open the Promotions page and read the terms of that exact offer: campaign type, amount, days.
2. Ask if you would spend that amount anyway. If not, the credit costs you the spend.
3. Put a date in your calendar for when the credit ends, and check the campaign that day.

Keeping an eye on it

If you use the credit on a new campaign type, watch where the money goes in the first weeks. Ads MCP connects your AI assistant to your Google Ads account in read only mode and can show spend by campaign and the searches that cost money without converting.