Google‘s AdWords advertising division has announced that it will be tightening up reporting requirements for “partners” (i.e., third-party agencies that manage AdWords accounts for their clients) beginning February 2011. The new requirements will obligate agencies to report the number of clicks, impressions, and actual ad spend to their clients, in addition to whatever metrics the agency already includes in reports.
The main intention of Google behind this seems to be to increase retention of advertisers who may have dropped out of the program because they believed AdWords was ineffective, when in truth the lack of effectiveness may have been the result of how little of the money they were turning over to their agencies was actually going into ads.
Is your current agency providing those metrics in your reports? If not, why not? Virante‘s paid search division has always included full disclosure of clicks, impressions, and actual ad spend, along with a host of other important metrics and KPI‘s.
