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
-
Have you had success using adwords to promote blog content?
From time to time I see an ad pop up in search results for blog content and have often wondered how much success these ads have had in promoting the specific post. Does anyone have experience with this? What results did you see?
Paid Search Marketing | | unikey0 -
Adword San Francisco Reach number
Hello, I have noticed in Adwords, when I select San Francisco or San Francisco county as a location for the campaign, it shows the reach as 7,220,000 Now I know that reach may be different from census data and depends largely on number of google signed-in users. But this number is waaay of. According to census there are only about 850,000 people in SF county, lets add as much that commute to SF for work, then we still have only 1,700,000 - not even close to 7,220,000 google is reporting. Also note that for the rest of the Bay Area counties the Adwords reach numbers match very closely census data. Any ideas?
Paid Search Marketing | | SirMax0 -
AdWords & Iframes?
We have a client that has syndicated content across a variety of domains. They have no access to the domain/hosting for the site that the content is being syndicated on, but would like to run PPC campaigns to these pages. The page is a header, footer and then the main page content is inside of an iframe, and I was wondering if Google will even allow that to be used as a landing page for a PPC campaign? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | RCDesign740 -
Does anyone have any analytics for programmatic mobile advertising?
With reports like Business Insiders Programmatic Ad Buying On Mobile Is Rising At An Incredibly Fast Clip, Here's What You Need To Know (http://www.businessinsider.com/the-of-programmatic-ad-buying-on-mobile-2013-11), I'm starting to wonder if this is really an effective marketing vehicle. Personally, I avoid mobile ads like the plague when I'm on my smartphone and most ads look to me like poorly targeted junk, but I could be way off. If you've tried it out, I'd love to know what the post-click behavior is on programmatic mobile ads. Do your mobile visitors convert on any level? Is there any ROI data you could reference?
Paid Search Marketing | | MeghanS0 -
Potential problems with multiple users of an adwords MCC
Morning all, I have had a query regarding granting access to an MCC account for people using various platforms. Now this a pretty specific query for an area outside my expertise, and conveniently both our PPC guys are on holiday so thought i would reach out to the community. Full request is this: "On the mcc I am slightly concerned about that, from experience I have run into problems especially with granting access for usage of API’s on an account, so if for example we wanted to use marin they would need access then another wanted to use adobe they would need another and if they are all sat under the SSM teams mcc that could be problematic or we would have to set up another." Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Tom.
Paid Search Marketing | | Sarbs0 -
How Can I Target Certain Countries in Google AdWords without Excluding Other Countries?
So, here is the situation: Our company works with merchants worldwide (with the exception of those who live in excluded high-risk countries--mostly in Africa), but most of our Google AdWords leads come from Indian merchants. My CEO wants our campaigns to convert leads from other countries (i.e., the UK, Germany, US, Canada, Australia, etc.), but I have no idea how to do that without excluding India. However, my CEO does not want to exclude India from our AdWords campaigns as the leads are profitable. We simply want more diversity with out leads in terms of geographic location. I am sure there are resources on the Web about how to do this, but I am not an Adwords expert and am unsure of what phrases to search to find the answers. Direct advice or helpful links are much appreciated. Regards,
Paid Search Marketing | | Instabill
Meghan0 -
Google Adwords Conversion Tracking Code Help - Not Showing Conversions
Hi, all. I am having issues with a clients website. They have their website developed by a company http://www.flowerstoreinabox.com.au/ my clients website is http://www.flawlessflowers.com.au the google adwords conversion tracking code has been added to their site. It measures all details as far as ads clicked on, etc.. the only part that is not been measured is the conversions of the adwords campaign. So I cannot see if the ads are successful or what their conversion % is. I have looked at the code on the thank you page and the google adwords conversion code is present on the thank you page after the sale. I am not a coder and so not sure what to look at if all the details on the checkout page exist in the code to measure the adwords conversion ecommerce transactions correctly. I have provided a link to the source code of the competed order page. If someone could look at the code and provide any assistance I would appreciate it. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16973368/7 may adwords flawless flowers.txt I am also happy to provide you access to the google analytics account if required just give me your email address to set it up. Thanks for all your help Regards Arthur
Paid Search Marketing | | VivaArturo0 -
Graph ad groups by cost in Adwords
Easy one for someone I'm sure, but I can't figure it out. In Adwords under campaigns "Widget" I have ad groups "Blue", "Green" and "Red" each with 3 ads in them. How can I produce a compared report on cost per day of each ad group. So I want something that looks like 1st 2nd 3rd ...
Paid Search Marketing | | StalkerB
Blue £12 £14 £9 ...
Green £8 £11 £5 ...
Red £9 £22 £16 ... Possible?0