Many companies hire professional ad management teams (such as us) to manage their AdWords campaigns. These companies are governed by Google’s “Third Party Policy” which helps to ensure companies providing this type of service are acting ethically and providing a fair and valuable service to the customers. Google has recently announced that they are making some important updates to this policy, which will have some direct impact both on the companies themselves, and all clients that they serve.
The four main points that Google mentioned in the official announcement were as follows (pulled directly from the announcement itself):
- A clearer picture of what Google expects from third parties
- More insight into why each part of the policy exists
- More transparency around what happens if you violate the policy
- Two new requirements aimed at increasing transparency and accountability of third-party partners.
Of these, the main point that will be impacting our customers will be the last one. The updated policy will require that third party companies are up front and open about the specific management fees that they charge. Specifically, any money that is charged above and beyond the costs of the AdWords or AdWords Express costs needs to be clearly available to clients. We are already in compliance with this part of the new policy since we make it a point to ensure we are transparent with our customers regarding any fees or costs that we charge to our customers.
The next point is in regards to providing clients with their own AdWords or AdWords Express customer IDs. Each AdWords campaign has its own ID created, which is used for choosing the ads to display, billing, and customer service. In the past some third party companies would not provide their clients with this ID, which made it more difficult for businesses to get direct customer support from Google when necessary.
Once the new policy is in place, third parties will be required to provide this ID to customers, and have it available if they request it again. Just like the other update, we have always offered our clients access to their customer IDs, and will continue to.
Overall this update won’t have any significant impact to Inwrux clients, but it is certainly a positive step in the right direction for Google as a whole as it will help ensure that all third parties are doing more to be transparent to their clients.
