Can a third-party advertising agency lock me out of Adwords?
-
Hey all, I've just started at a new company. We spend quite a bit on Adwords and I'm tasked with seeing how that is going and assessing that spend. The problem is, Adwords and Youtube ads have been given to a third-party advertising agency. They are only willing to share the number of clicks, cost and conversions, stuff like that. They refuse to give us access to the account.
Is this legal? I mostly want to get in there to look at keyword history, see what we have bid on, how often it was searched, stuff like that. But they won't let us in and I'm wondering if they are required to let us look at our account as I would think they are. Please help!
-
I suppose it all depends on who set up the account in the first place, if they did all the ground work and set up the campaigns, and ad groups then they probably don't have to let you see it. I would rather have my account set up in house initially then grant access to third parties who then get tagged as an editor etc, that way you remain as the account holder.
I do not think it unreasonable that you have asked for evidence of what they are bidding on, negatived keywords, search terms, ad trials, optimisation etc. It is all basic data that can be shared. Like Egol said, look into your contract and see what they should be divulging via their reports etc.
Finally....
Are they proving their worth? If not consider outsourcing to someone/ some agency that can or is willing to share, build a relationship and improve. -
If the agency is working on your behalf, then it depends on the agreed contract. Ultimately, you might decide that it's worth switching to an agency which isn't as protective about the accounts.
Personally as someone who runs Adwords and Youtube accounts for various clients, I tend to group them within the account for my agency simply because it means we have a bigger overall spend, so we might get a slightly better response from Google etc, and it also means that we never have access issues when we're checking them daily (and the client generally doesn't have the time or desire to monitor as closely). But I also give them top level account access as a matter of course, even if they never use it - optimising ad accounts isn't a massive secret - it's mainly long, dull and tedious optimisation!And if a client prefers, I'm always fine with letting them maintain the account as long as I can get the access I need - the only difference really is that it doesn't then count towards the totals for Google Partner status etc, but that's not a massive issue...
Having had agencies hand over accounts in the past, I've seen good and bad examples, and I certainly wouldn't want to work with an agency that wasn't willing to let me have a quick look at negative keyword lists etc every so often, espencially if you're spending a reasonable amount...
-
Interesting question you pose.
Do you have permission from your boss to look at adwords account? If so then I would think that you should have access.. Agencies wont want you accessing account and making changes however as you mention its very useful to be able to see which keywords are gaining best ctr so that you can repeat in your SEO efforts. Forgive me for being cynical however their refusal to allow you access could hide a number of issues eg the change history will reveal how much work they are doing (or not). Even worse they could be spending your firms budget direct ads to other sites. If they wont allow you access you need to get some very good reasons indeed. Otherwise time for a new agency imho.
-
This company might believe that the work that they do is proprietary. They don't want you to sniff it because they worry that you will discover valuable information that will enable you to leave them and benefit from their work.
If you sell products or services that are common and leave them, there is a good chance that they will take what they learned from you and offer similar service to another business, or set up their own business - if they are not doing it already. This depends upon them being prevented to doing that by confidentiality language in your contract. Otherwise it might be considered as their proprietary data.
If I was in your situation, I would examine my contract with this company and see if there is anything in there that prevents me from visiting the account to verify that they are spending what they say they are spending and that I am the beneficiary of the entire spend.
I am not an attorney but I am pretty sure that there is nothing criminal about their arrangement with you. But, you have no way of knowing what's happening deep down without full access to the account and all of its historical record. You probably don't have any civil claim against them unless you can prove that they are violating a contract that both of you have signed. This is certainly where an attorney would be helpful, if the service provider is located where enforcement is possible. Otherwise, you will probably have to wait until your contract is up for renewal or negotiate a termination.
Based upon my own use of Adwords, I believe that things work best when bidding strategies are informed by pricing, costs of good sold, profit margins, and lifetime customer values..... and pricing strategies at the item level can't be wisely set if you only have aggregated data. That would be my argument to get access to the account. Bidding and selling are best done with shared data rather than things being held secret... but some people have a poor understanding of that or simply want to work behind a curtain without knowing if they are delivering best possible performance. That's personal opinion.
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
-
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 -
Adwords enhanced campaigns - Specify alternate destination URLs
Morning Mozzers, I am setting up a new campaign for a client, they would like to target mobile devices which evidently i can no longer do with enhanced campaigns; however i have increased the Mobile bid as much as possible and set the default CPC low to try and minimise appearance in desktop search. The client has a desktop and a mobile version of the destination page but the site will not direct users to the correct page based on their device as they are two separate domains. As such i want to know if i can specify an alternate destination URL for an ad in Adwords based on if the click comes from a mobile or desktop device? The other option is to set all my Ads within the Adgroup to have mobile as the device preference and just use the mobile landing page, but not sure if there is a neater solution here? Thanks, Tom.
Paid Search Marketing | | Sarbs0 -
Adwords & Analytics Different Product Listing Results
Hi We have recently set up a Product Listings ad campaign via AdWords and have seen some impressive initial figures in our AdWords account. However, when viewing data from the same period in Analytics it shows completely different statistics. For example, from 1st-16th June, AdWords shows 604 clicks and 29 conversions from our Product Listings campaign but Google Analytics only shows 23 clicks and 0 conversions across the same period. Any ideas why these variations show? Is there any additional tracking code that needs to be inserted at all? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | instinctive0 -
Adwords and Analytics figures not matching up
We are currently running a A/B test on a landing page using only adwords to split the traffic. Looking at the figures in adwords has given us a higher number of conversions than the analytics is giving us in transactions. The conversion rate is also different. The only visitors this page is getting is from Adwords. Can someone please help us understand why this is? Cheers Al
Paid Search Marketing | | -Al-0 -
Google Adwords Book
Does anyone have a suggestion on a very recent Google Adwords book?
Paid Search Marketing | | phogan0 -
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 -
Is there any correlation between the on-page factors being complete in moz and having a good quality score in Adwords?
I've been optimizing the website for a few keywords we're targeting and I'm looking to improve the quality score for my Adwords landing pages. My on-page scoring is great, but my scores in Adwords are low. Ideas?
Paid Search Marketing | | Bombbomb0 -
Adwords ban
my client has 2 adwords accounts - one banned in 2009 and one where 9 of 11 ads are suspended - the other 2 ads run and he pays 6k per month for traffic - he still has net60 terms with no limit on ad spend b/c his offer converts so well. he wants to clear his name so we can proceed further without risk of being banned - he is paying me a pretty penny to turn his 4/10 qual scores into 9's and 10's - he will get 2x the traffic at 1/2 the price and i am looking to make a major 6 figure bump to his bottom line this year so he can jstify paying my exhorbitant fee. lol. i am not getting much help from the folks over at the Big G - to be expected - they have suspended 9 of his ads for "artificial ad traffic" - at least that is their reason - any way he is legit - in biz for 12 years online - with 60,000 customers on his list and over 1000 testimonials on his site - my question is is there any way GG will connect the dots in 4 months once i have his adwords campaign fully optimized and running smoothly and say "hey arent you the guy who we suspended twice over the past 2 years???" or are we to be judged simply on what we do from here forward with this new account? i am having his designer create 100 new landing pages to match the 100 unique ads for the 100 exactmatch kw's for the 100 unique ad groups - lotta work - but once its done its 10/10 across the board - with no mention of artificially boosting someone's traffic -- although isnt that what everyone is doing when they buy visits to their sites? this goes on all day long and no o ne seems to care - except GG but my client sells real human traffic not bot generated crap. all love, EZ
Paid Search Marketing | | ezubkov0