Google ads question

July 10, 2023 9:24 AM

Ad agencies will run campaigns for different clients within the same Google Ads Agency account. But do those clients' campaigns compete against each other for keyword bidding, thus driving up the price of they keywords?

From what I understand, different campaigns within the same regular user account do not compete with each other on keyword bidding. Because if they did, the whole thing would be a shitshow.

But for ad agencies running campaigns for multiple clients, they often use a Master account that gives them a bird's eye view on how all of them are running. However, are they able to prevent their clients' campaigns from competing against each other for keyword bidding?

And if not, if they are willingly and knowingly driving up their clients' prices, how do they sleep at night? lol

posted by winterportage to Technology (3 answers total)

Usually Ad Agencies won't work for competing firms in the exact same industry. Like, it's relatively rare that those companies would work for both Ford and GM. When it does happen, they often try to give different people those clients.

If one ad agency did in fact have two competing clients, and they did have that birdseye view, they would be pretty careful about what would be communicated with each client. They tend to take that kind of thing seriously. They would probably project an ad spend budget for each client, then divide both clients budgets out for the year and come to it that way.

Keep in mind, "bidding up" space doesn't benefit the ad agency, it benefits google. So generally the agency will try to keep those prices as low as possible.

But again, it's a moot point - ad agencies almost always won't work for competing companies in the same industry. Or if they do, totally different branches. There are way more ad agencies than big companies out there, and they all can take multiple clients, and there's just a TON of different types of industries. Maybe the Car agency brings on a plumbing company and a granola company, for instance.
posted by bbqturtle at 10:34 AM on July 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

It’s technically possible. It’s not very likely, as a big part of doing a good ad buy on key words is working to find niche words and phrases. You want to be able to demonstrate what you can do that no one else is. You really weaken your case and bidding for clients if you are so messy and unprofessional that you aren’t coming up with unique key words and are taking multiple clients in a single business area. Look how upset you are (asking how they slept at night) - that’s terrible client management. I can’t see any agency doing that as a business strategy.
posted by Bottlecap at 12:40 PM on July 10, 2023

Response by poster: Just wanted to chime in and say this something I'm trying to understand theoretically, and I may not fully understand (hence why I'm asking this question). I'm not actively dealing with an agency right now, or living this situation.
posted by winterportage at 1:36 PM on July 10, 2023