Paid search agencies need to give power back to the clients

12 March 2009

“Conspiracy theorists may like to believe we’re mere pawns in Google’s cunning plans to cut out agencies altogether”

As service providers in the search industry, we like to think we reflect the attributes of our medium. Performance, accountability and transparency are words most of us use to describe how we work with clients. But what transparency actually means in a client-agency relationship in search can be far from clear.

Intellectual property — or, in simple terms, ‘who owns the Google account?’ — is a key issue. It’s not just a matter of transparency in terms of access to data but one of ownership should an advertiser choose to change agency or bring their paid search campaign in-house.

Google works in quite a simple way. Generally, whoever pays the bill owns the account and everything that’s in it. From an advertiser’s perspective this is the optimal position. If the AdWords account is linked to the client’s analytics, then the entire cycle of vital business data is not only available to the client but is owned by them and entirely under their control. Of course, this data becomes more valuable the longer it stretches back and ownership of it becomes even more critical. Advertisers can still fully outsource the management of their Google account but they have a future-proof setup with ultimate protection in terms of IP ownership and transparency.

Two weeks ago we decided to shift power back to the client, setting them up so they’re the owner and administrator of the account and are billed directly by Google. Their accounts are still actively managed by VCCP Search, with no change to the services we provide, we simply bill the clients for fees, rather than fees and media.

Conspiracy theorists may like to believe we’re mere pawns in Google’s cunning plans to cut out agencies altogether. But our move anticipates what I believe will become the standard way of working. Google’s Best Practice Funding created a market where agencies received bigger kickbacks the greater volume of media budget they managed. Paid search became just another media buy and search skills were devalued as campaigns were run without fees in the push to win big budgets. An industry grew up around who was bigger rather than who was better.

The search industry is still unwinding itself from this pile-‘em-high era. But with BPF now thankfully a thing of the past, service providers in search can start thinking about more effective and innovative ways to structure their businesses. Putting the power back into the hands of the client is a step towards a new, more mature sector.

Have your say

Please do not complete the following form field for security reasons.

Name

E-mail

Comment

Post as

Anonymously

Display name

I have read and agree to the terms and conditions