Agencies Take Note: Google Third-Party Policy Changes Coming Nov. 2014

Last month, Google rolled out an updated policy center for all advertisers. Starting in November, agencies and other third-party firms and individuals that manage Google advertising for customers will need to conform to new third-party policies.

The two new transparency requirements are:

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.

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.

The current policy mandates that third-parties disclose AdWords media costs, clicks and impressions at the account level. Now all management fees must be disclosed on invoices. So, if you’re agency rolls pre-determined agency management fees in with media spend on monthly invoices, these costs will have to be itemized.

Secondly, and this should be obvious, give your clients their customer IDs when they ask for them.