This afternoon I met with our Google rep and they have approved a solution for brokerages that want to advertise “agent sub domains” but not get flagged for abusing the ad network with multiple accounts in the same domain.
First let’s explain the challenge (and the policy)
The challenge is this: Agents want to have their “own” Adwords account and buy traffic / manage PPC sending it to their sub domain.
Google however does not allow this if the brokerage already has an adwords account associated with that domain since their rules clearly state only 1 ad account per “domain” - and sub domains are considered part of the main domain. So you simply are not allowed to do it.
Here is the exact language for reference: (from Abusing the ad network - Advertising Policies Help)
And it makes sense. They don’t want multiple ads showing at the “same time” referring to the “same domain” it looks spammy.
Here is the solution:
While you can’t advertise multiple sub domains from “multiple accounts” you CAN advertise multiple sub domains from campaigns within the “same” account. The reason why is Google can then run the auction queries properly and ensure they don’t serve “more than one” ad at any given time from the same URL.
So now it just become an administration task:
Each agent needs to be setup on their own “Campaign” under the brokerage campaign (this requires the brokerage to have an adwords account being run by REW)
We set budgets (per day) at the “Campaign” level - that way we ensure we never overspend on any particular agents budget and once depleted for the day, their ads are no longer in the auction.
Some best practices:
Ideally you still down want a bunch of campaigns competing for the same target terms, and so you want to get your agents wherever possible to pick unique areas to target. (But we have solutions for managing the scenario where several agents want the same area. We got this!)
You can also choose different times per day per campaign (or days of week) to “stagger” budgets so campaigns are not competing in the same auction at the same time.
Quality score now becomes more important, since auctions are won not just by bid price but also multiplied by quality score for a final position and win result.
So if you are already a brokerage with an ad account at REW (you must first have a brokerage level account) according to my conversation with a senior Google rep, we “should” be able to process PPC budgets on a “per agent” level.
And yes, we can bill and administrate it all for you directly with the agent so you should not have to do anything other than let them know this is now an option.
As a side benefit, this means a lot more data (more budget = more traffic) those your own brokerage account with REW should improve over time as well.
Today is a good day! This was something several of our brokerages have been trying to sort out, and we didn’t really have a way around double serving, but this should work as long as it’s all under one managed account. (Disclaimer - this was a phone call approval, and yet to be tested. I will be testing on my own ads account first to make sure all is well). REW provides no guarantees based on Google representations.