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
-
LinkedIn Agency Account
Hello, Is there such things as a LinkedIn agency account (similar to Google Ads Account Manager and Facebook Business / Ads Manager). I seem to be going around in circles with the LinkedIn help!
Paid Search Marketing | | P.Myers0 -
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 -
Baidu PPC Agency Recommendations
I have a client that is a perfect fit for the Chinese market, but have had issues with reseller agencies that don't really know what they are doing. Does anyone have any agency recommendations? I am only spending a few grand a month.
Paid Search Marketing | | JerrodDavid0 -
Anyone got an upgraded semrush.com account?
Hi Guys I'd like someone to run and email a report on one of my competitors in an upgraded semrush.com account please! I only want to run one report and don't really want to shell out $70 for one report. The company is super event dot co dot uk. If any one could help that would be ace! All the best Ben
Paid Search Marketing | | SussexChef830 -
Impressions data: Google Webmaster Tools VS Google AdWords
Dear community, I was doing some research within Google Webmaster Tools (WMT) keyword data when I noticed that the impressions within this tool are quite different compared to the keyword impression data provided by Google AdWords (ADW). Some specs about the situation: Date: December 2014 (31 days). Keyword: brand + main keyword* (e.g. amazon shoes, if Amazon would have been the client) Visitors come from: the Netherlands (>97%). Search volume: 3,8 K for this branded keyword last year (December 2013), of which >99% came from the Netherlands (source: Google Keyword Planner). Search query data: "impressions" for Google WMT (organic keyword impressions) and “impressions” for Google ADW (paid keyword impressions). Of course the ADW keyword is [exact]. So, what's wrong? The data doesn’t match, while I expected approximately the same amount of impressions assuming the keywords are: both [exact] keywords; (check! ✓) within the same period of time; (check! ✓) the Ad is being displayed "all the time" (check! ✓) the domain/page is being indexed "all the time" (check! ✓) How much of a difference is there? Organic impressions: 7,4 K (source: Google WMT) Paid impressions: 2,1 K (source: Google ADW) Note that the search volume according to Google Keyword Planner of last year is somewhere in between: 3,8K. The search volume from this tool of last December is not available just yet (but I don’t expect much difference here since Google Trends shows a steady search volume). If the difference would have been 10-20%, I wouldn't be surprised at all, but this is huge. **What could explain the differences? ** If a lot of people were using AdBlockers (they do, but not nearly as massively (around 10%)). If we would have made mistakes in AdWords: budget, bidding, targeting etc. - This is not the case, got this confirmed by the manager who double-checked the data and settings. Also: since it’s a branded keyword it’s really cheap for us and easy to get high quality scores. If we would have made mistakes regarding indexing/crawling that would have caused an extreme loss in domain visibility in the SERP's: possibly caused by robots.txt, a noindex-tag, server problems etc. This was not the case and Google WebmasterTools says the average position was 1,0 during the complete month. "Something else" went wrong during that specific period of time with this specific domain. I don’t think so because I checked multiple months and multiple other domains of other clients. These gave me the same relative results (okay, some were a bit closer: 30 K paid impressions vs 62 K organic impressions for instance, still a big difference). What other possibilities are left? The impressions from Google WMT and Google ADW are not the same, even though they are called the same and therefore suggest they should be (about) the same. AdWords just randomly fails to display and/or measure some branded ads (even though there is plenty of budget, bidding is fine and QS is 10/10). Definitions of "impressions" for both tools according Google: AdWords definition of "impressions" WebmasterTools definition of "impressions" Hope someone has some more suggestions or useful links! Thanks in advance! Ektor Tsolodimos
Paid Search Marketing | | BlueMango0 -
Using multiple domains in one Adwords account
Hi, I am currently setting up an Adwords account and wanted to know if you can run multiple websites through one account. We have 2 domains each promoting a different one of our brands and i was wondering the best way to run the account. Regards Ben
Paid Search Marketing | | benjmoz0 -
Does anyone else get a crazy amount of misdials to your AdWords call extension?
Not sure how many people here also do PPC, but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask. Since we added a call extension to one of our AdWords campaigns a few months ago, we have gotten a crazy amount of misdials/wrong numbers. I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this. Here's what happens: We choose one of the numbers we own, say 888-123-4567, and set it up so it displays ADWORDS on the phone's screen when it rings. This way, our customer service and sales reps will know when they are taking an AdWords call. We type that number into the call extension settings. AdWords then assigns a different number to us, which will appear on our ads and forward to our number. Say it's 888-234-5678. Then for months, every "ADWORDS" call we get is someone trying to reach a different company at 888-234-5679 or 888-235-5678. In other words, the number they're trying to dial is one digit off from the number AdWords assigned to us. When we first reported this to AdWords before Christmas, they simply assigned us a new number. It did not help. Now we just get misdials for different companies. So are we alone in this wrong-number phenomenon?
Paid Search Marketing | | CMC-SD0 -
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