Google launches Adwords Business Credit program for small businesses

Google’s bad news, your good news

Google was in the news late last week due to its premature earnings release, costing the company an estimated $3 billion. However, just a few days before, the search engine-based company did a laudable act that could be of huge benefit to small and mid-sized business owner.

This month, Google launched its Adwords Business Credit program. Rolled out to beta users in the U.K., the program will help finance online advertising for businesses through keyword searches.

How the program works

The Adwords bidding process will still work the same as business owners place bids on particular key words in order to create ads that will show up in the “sponsored links” section alongside a user’s search results. However the program is useful to business owners as it gives them a way to pay for these Adwords bids and campaigns, as well as the opportunity to track the amount of money they spend on keyword search advertising.

The pilot program took place last July in the U.S. and U.K. with 1,400 users testing it out. As of now, the program is only available to select business owners in the U.K., but Google plans to expand the program into the U.S. later this month.

Details of the card

The Google card has no annual fee and has an interest rate of as low as 8.99 percent up to 18.99 percent for U.S. credit holders once the program begins. The U.S. version of the card will be a MasterCard offered through a Google partnership with Comenity Capital Bank and can only be used on Adwords spending.

Fully 74 percent of users in the pilot program said they use Adwords Business Credit to finance their Adwords campaigns. If small and mid-sized business owners in the U.S. are able to get a reasonable interest rate, this could be a viable way to pay for Adwords usage. It provides business owners with a means to try out a new form of advertising that they may not have had funding to do before, or continue to do so if they’re a regular user.