Why do some Adwords agencies insist on setting up Adwords in their own account?
-
I'm an online marketing consultant and I work with a variety of agencies who handle Adwords. I keep running into an issue where agencies want to set up Adwords in a proprietary account for my clients rather than in the client's account and manage it through MCC. I have just run into again and this time the agency claims they are protecting their Adwords "secret sauce" but that the client will still have full access to keywords, negative keywords, Ad copy, etc. It just doesn't pass the sniff test with me.
Can anyone tell me if there are some legitimate reasons for an agency to do this other than to simply try to hold data hostage so that clients can't leave them without loss? I am inclined to tell my client they should run away screaming, but thought I would bounce it off you smart people first.
Thanks!
-
Really good point Paul. I hadn't thought about the build up of quality score, that is a biggy. Thanks for your contribution!
-
Fully agree with Brett Here. The other aspect that a lot of clients don't realise until too late is that an account builds up Quality Score value as it ages. If that account is held by the agency and the client decides they no longer wish to do business with that agency, they can hopefully at least obtain a download of the campaigns, keywords etc, but by switching to a new account, they'll lose ALL the quality score that has been built up. They'll be starting again from scratch.
In addition, they'll have lost a great deal of the historical data that would be essential to optimising the new account from scratch.
The MCC system was built by Google to help advertisers avoid getting screwed in exactly this way. Agencies that don't use MCC for clients are clearly saying they're more interested in their own convenience and profit than in what's best for their client.
My $0.02.
Paul
-
This is exactly how I feel. It is absurd. Thanks for your response.
-
good point about the antsy clients, but most of my clients have no interest in even touching it. Thanks!
-
As far as i'm concerned there is no legitimate reason. I've taken on clients that have previously had this scenario and it's absurd. The client, i.e. the ADVERTISER owns the data in that account so agencies should access a clients adwords account via an MCC, that's what an MCC is for!
In EVERY case where i've seen agencies use their own accounts, the client has received flaky reporting and had no real understanding of ROI. If an agency knows what it is doing, it should have no problem doing it properly.
-
The only real reason I would avoid setting it up in a clients account is to protect myself from antsy clients that like to tweak stuff without knowing what they're doing.
When we set accounts up for clients we use their acounts and manage everything from our MCC, but there might be something we're missing in the sense of reasons to not use an MCC.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Adwords disapproving ads with the word "Jewish"?
Hi guys, I do marketing for many nonprofits, and one of my clients is a Jewish women's organization. In the past week or so, Google has started disapproving ads and keywords that have the word "Jewish" in them. I know Facebook got called out recently for allowing people to target based on anti-Semitic sentiments, so I'm wondering if this is just Google's terrible execution of caution. It's telling me that keywords with the word "jewish" in them (like "jewish women's organization in boston" is derogatory or dangerous). I've asked for Google's help, and they've been incredibly slow to respond. Is anyone else facing this with other religions or content? Natalie
Paid Search Marketing | | newwhy1 -
How do companies protect against Adword sabotage?
What's to stop a company from buying a service to click on competitors' adwords thereby frivolously spending companies' ad budgets?
Paid Search Marketing | | Edward_Sturm0 -
Google Analytics showing my Adwords campaign bounce rate at 0%
I am relatively new to Adwords, and I can't figure out why the Adwords section of Analytics is showing all my site visitors at 0% bounce rate. Does that mean the account connection is not done right? Obviously Google ads are not a 0% bounce rate. If I can't get that to work, does anyone know how Google ads appear in Traffic? Is it Direct or Referral? I'm sure there's some simple answer I'm just not aware of, I would appreciate anyone's help. Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | Crystalline_150 -
Adwords: Decrease mobile bid for only certain ad groups?
In one of my AdWords campaigns, I've noticed that certain ad groups consistently convert twice as badly on mobile devices as other ad groups do. Is there a way to adjust mobile bidding only for certain ad groups, or can you only control this campaign-wide?
Paid Search Marketing | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Put AdWords mobile ads in separate Campaign or AdGroup?
We want to ramp up traffic from the segment "Mobile with Full Browser" under enhanced campaigns in Google AdWords. Our Google rep said that it would be best to do this from within the same campaign. We're contemplating pulling the mobile traffic conversion effort out into its own campaign in order to more easily track performance. Background: We bid down traffic from "Mobile with Full Browser" to -100% because initially it performed poorly. We've improved our mobile experience and we want to try again. We're contemplating building mobile versions of our current ads using the AdWords functionality that does this, and watching how the mobile ads and the segment "Mobile with Full Browser" responds this time. Separate campaign or from within the same campaign. What would you do? Thanks,
Paid Search Marketing | | mbiskup0 -
Wordwatch Software: PPC Adwords campaign managers heard of, tried, or actively using this?
I've been trialing WordWatch for about a month. I'll admit I've been skeptical from the start. I don't quite understand the results they're delivering or how it works. So I did a search for "Wordwatch review" hoping someone out there could shed some light or help me decide whether this software was worth keeping. But all I can find are two suspicious and badly written posts, immediately raising red flags. (Penuguin should have eliminated crap sites using the Flesch-Kincaid reading level, but I digress.) **Wordwatch premise: **They take over keyword bidding to maximize budgets and clicks. They monitor the Adwords campaign to find an "optimal" bid price. Two questions about this premise: How is it different than using the Google settings for optimize for clicks or conversions? Since Google Adwords is based on a Vickery auction, wouldn't lowering my bid only lower my position? Bearing everyone has the same QS, then lowering my bids to the range between 2 positions does not increase my actual cost. I have Wordwatch enabled for a few of my campaigns. Their interface leaves a lot to be desired. They don't report the activity or the changes they make to the campaigns from the dashboard. I had to go into my Adwords Change History to track what they were doing. And lo and behold they're also adding long tail keywords to my ad groups. Bottom line I didn't notice any huge impact, and I don't see how it's better than Google's own version of campaign settings. I don't know that they're really legit. But their marketing was so convincing, and they raised $1.4M that I need other opinions. Any one with some pro/cons, or yay/nays?
Paid Search Marketing | | flowsimple0 -
Can anyone recommend a talented multilingual paid search agency or consultant?
We need a multilingual SEM agency for a campaign thats going to span multiple non english speaking markets at a decent monthly spend. Any recommendations?
Paid Search Marketing | | freepeople0 -
Keyword domains for AdWords - duplicate content an issue
Hi guys, A client of mine has bought a raft of keyword domains for use in an AdWords campaign. This isn't my area of expertise, hence the question. They have a hosting account which can host an unlimited number of domains. Can they set up the domains with the same content on each site and then use AdWords to drive traffic to the sites? I've suggested they can use rel="canonical" to specify that the preferred site is the main site of the company which should bypass the duplicate content issue. Is this the best way to host the sites or is there a better alternative? Thanks in advance, Brendan.
Paid Search Marketing | | brendanbelladesign0