Google Responds To #GoogleGate: AdWords Account Manager’s Accidental Voice Mail Recording

Earlier this week, Martin MacDonald, inbound marketing director at Expedia EAN, in a post on his website titled “#GoogleGate – Can you Trust Google?,” embedded a voice mail recording a Google AdWords account manager unknowingly left for a client.

Presumably thinking he’d hung up, the account representative is heard cursing the fact that the client upgraded to enhanced campaigns without first speaking to him and that he’ll then have to “pitch call extensions and sitelinks” instead. He goes on to say he doesn’t care about  “those bridge pages or parked domains” the client apparently is using.

The implications are:

1) AdWords account reps are paid to upsell new products and services that may or may not be in the client’s best interest

2) The account rep is willingly ignoring Google’s advertising policies, here, about using bridge pages: “Google AdWords doesn’t allow ads that promote bridge pages.”

3) AdWords account managers are sales people first and foremost.

Asked for a statement on the matter, a Google spokesperson said:

We’ve addressed these issues with our vendor, and the person that was involved was removed from the AdWords team several weeks ago.

So, it appears the account manager wasn’t an actual Google employee, but an outside contractor. Google has outsourced some AdWords customer support and account management for some time now, but it’s not clear what percentage is contracted.

Judging by the social shares and comments, MacDonald’s post struck a chord.  Was this an extreme, isolated incident, as Google’s statement implies, or is it indicative of  a broader sales culture others have experienced as well? Many have chimed in on both sides of the debate about whether advertisers should expect more from their account managers beyond the upsell.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.