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 Broad Match Quality Score
** This question is about QS of Broad Match and how it pertains to THE AUCTION ONLY. Not looking for opinions on campaign/ad group structure/strategies. For an Adwords account where all the ad groups are using modified broad match keywords I see that some keywords are assigned quality score. Obviously a broad match keyword can be triggered by a very wide variety of actual keyword searches. So I assume/guess that Adwords assigns a quality score for every single keyword entered that matches with that broad match and then makes the quality score for the broad match an average of the actual search term used quality score weighted by the volume of searches for that search term? Or am I wrong and the quality score for a broad match is the exact match quality score for that term (I doubt that since broad match the words can be in any order.) So for example, let's same I have this broad match score: +auto +insurance This is going to match with: auto insurance companies, auto insurance prices, luxury auto insurance, auto insurance brokers, and on and on and on. Let's say my landing page happens to have a lot of content about ratings for auto insurance brokers. If the CTR for that terms is high, when it's matching my modified broad match, does that mean Adwords assigns a higher quality score, internally, to the search term "auto insurance broker" so if that term is entered, for the purpose of the auction, Adwords doesn't use the quality score of the broad match but the quality score it has calculated for that specific search term -- I just can't see what it is because I don't have that term as an exact match term on my account. Or, does it use the broad match quality score no matter what search term is used that matched the broad match? I would be highly surprised if that was true. If this were true, then you would want to break out the important terms into their own exact match keywords. In many cases, the more efficient strategy for an account is to have fairly narrow modified broad match terms coupled with a very large negative keyword list. The question is mainly, is there any advantage from the perspective of competing in the auction to have the term be an exact match versus matching a modified broad match keyword? If QS is stored for the actual search term, then I would assume the answer is NO. I know it would provide more granular reporting and the ability to more fine tune landing pages etc etc etc but I'm just talking purely from the perspective of the auction.
Paid Search Marketing | | Searchout0 -
AdWords Device-Level Bid Adjustments for Tablet not working for me
Yesterday Wordstream announced that AdWords rolled out device-level bid adjustments for tablet for everyone, but when I go into my campaign settings, it's the way it's always been, with no ability to adjust for tablet. I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing this, or is there perhaps some kind of setting I have to turn on? http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/07/26/device-level-bid-adjustments I am so excited about this change, seeing as our cost-per-conversion on tablets is always twice what it is on desktop, and not having control over it was maddening.
Paid Search Marketing | | UnderRugSwept0 -
I am a seller on Amazon and am looking for an agency/consultant to help optimize my products
Anyone do this kind of work or know anyone who does? Looking to act quickly. Our product is selling well and the team wants to put more money behind it and I'm not sure if that's necessary or if we just need to optimize our organic listing. Trying to understand scale and how Amazon differs from Adwords
Paid Search Marketing | | Eric_OWPP0 -
PPC/Adwords in China
I am trying to understand the challenges of running PPC in China. If anyone has any experience with adwords/Baidu/Alibaba I would really appreciate them sharing. I was having a hard time locating the specific polices in Adwords help. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | JerrodDavid0 -
Curious about Adwords keyword tool results.
Why the Google Adwords Keywords tool says there are 0 local monthly searches for a keyword or shows a dash, but in spite of this there's competition for those keywords (up to 0.42 in some cases) ? Thanks!!
Paid Search Marketing | | gerardoH0 -
Has anyone seen a recent study on % of clicks on Adwords vs Organic results?
HI, I am trying to find out what percentage of people click on organic search results on Google versus the percentage of people who click on advertisements. I have found many references online to studies that supposedly say 70-80% of clicks go to organic results and the rest go to ads, but I have never seen an actual study claiming this, let alone a recent one. Can anyone help? many thanks in advance, Annemieke
Paid Search Marketing | | AnnemiekevH0 -
Starting Fresh with a New PPC Account
I've inherited an Adwords account with a few years' worth of history. The account has changed hands a lot though and there's a lot of clutter and confusing account architecture (confusing and redundant campaigns, thousands of inactive long-long-tail keywords for every match type, etc.). I have a new architecture/strategy in mind but I'm unsure if I should start a new account from scratch, pause 90% of things and start some new campaigns, or delete a bunch of stuff permanently and start some new campaigns. My fear with the pausing option is that I'll have to wade through a bunch of clutter in my daily management and reporting - I like to keep things clean. My fear with deleting is losing data - I'd like to be able to always look back at how things were. And my fear with the new account from scratch method is losing whatever account/campaign quality score or historical value the account has built over time and the logistics of having to stop the old account to create a new account. Can you even have 2 accounts with the same domain or would I have to delete the old account before launching the new? For all my past PPC accounts, I started them more or less from scratch so this is new to me. Any advice/insights would be most appreciated. Thanks! Jeff
Paid Search Marketing | | jeff.gibson0 -
Adwords Quality Score and On-Page SEO
I'm trying to convince a large, multinational company that is very resistant to change, into making my on-page SEO changes. Compounding this resistance is the fact that the Analytics, SEO, PPC, and web dev departments are all under different people and they don't communicate very well. So, in order to get them to work together, I've decided to appeal to the places where they are sensitive; e.g., the PPC department where they surely have the desire to be more efficient with their budget. To appeal to this sensitivity, and with my goal of getting on-page changes done to help the SEO dept, I'm considering making the argument that my on-page changes will raise their quality score which will in turn lower the amount they are spending on PPC. Basically, is this a fair argument? Do you have an evidence to back this up? Best in the Midwest, Phil p.s. Hi, Joanna 😉
Paid Search Marketing | | PapaRelevance0