New major requirements to manage AdWords for clients

Starting November 2014, new transparency requirements will be mandatory for you or your digital marketing agency to continue managing Google advertising accounts for a client.

Last month Google rolled out an announcement stating that their new third-party policy update will be coming soon. According to Google, the “Google third-party policy applies to third parties that purchase or manage Google advertising on behalf of their customers. This policy is different from Google AdWords policies. If you use Google advertising products to advertise only your own goods and services, then our third-party policy does not apply to you.”

Google will be launching its new third-party policy in November 2014. Their new third-party policy includes the following new transparency requirements:

1. Management fees

Third parties often charge a management fee for the valuable services they provide, and end-advertisers should know if they are going to be charged these fees. If you charge a management fee beyond the cost of AdWords or AdWords Express, let customers know. At a minimum, inform new customers in writing before each first sale and disclose the existence of this fee on customer invoices.

2. AdWords or AdWords Express customer IDs

It’s important for advertisers to have the ability to contact Google directly with concerns about a third-party partner. To allow Google to properly investigate and assist the advertiser, we require that you provide your customers with the customer IDs for their AdWords or AdWords Express accounts when requested.

Google says that “almost all third-party partners that comply with Google’s current third-party policy will also comply with the new policy once they meet the added transparency requirements described above”, and therefore this shouldn’t be a problem to any agency or individual that is already doing things right.

Iñigo Etxebeste, October 20, 2014