{service_title}

Google Trusted Partners and Google’s Interests

April 27th 2017

We've had a few prospective clients compare us with other agencies, and we're often asked why we don't have Google's 'Google Trust Partner' certification/logo on our site. The answer may surprise you: we don't want it! Sure, we could complete the course that trains agencies to set campaigns up the way Google believes is 'best practice', but we've found that's not in our clients' best interests.

Google is great, don't get us wrong! AdWords is often an outstanding platform for pay-per click (PPC) because clients are only charged by Google when people actually click on their ads, and the ads are only visible to people searching for that product or service. Brilliant! The issue we have is that the way Google wants campaigns setup unnecessarily inflates the cost-per click (CPC). Simply put: they get everyone bidding against each other. This is, most definitely, in Google's interest. They don't seem to care about who or what is clicking, as long as those clicks are taking place.

Advertising has always been about matching. Generally speaking, you have a product, service or offering, and these things wouldn't exist unless their was a demand for them. The more closely you can match an ad to a person who wants what you're selling, the better for everyone. Think about it: ads probably only annoy you when you're shown something you have absolutely no interest in. If you have no children, and you're shown ads for child products, they're simply a waste of your time (and the advertiser's).

Google seems to train agencies to go for broad matches, and this is where we have a problem. While this will maximise reach (how many people can see your ads), it also lacks specificity. There will be a large number of people who simply don't want to see it. Now, at this point, you're thinking, "But we only pay for the click, so who cares?" You should! Why? With this 'broad match' approach, it means everyone is fighting for the same space. Just as a newspaper charges for space to print an ad, you can think of digital operating in a similar way. The more people bidding on a particular space, the more it will cost you for that space.

We do things differently, contrary to Google's best practices. It lowers our clients' CPC, and thus makes it easier for us to achieve a positive return on investment for them. Great, right?

So to bring things to a close: we're not a Google Trusted Partner, and we're proud of it!