I do know a of at least one of the bigger agencies that is still not providing clients with completely transparent PPC reporting, as they showed us the reporting they are currently receiving.

transparency is key here. Clients should have access where possible.

if the client leaves they should have access as well to previous data as should the new incumbent agency on historical data.

always nice to see a good old search debate here and there :-)

Glad to see that the conversation is on-going. For very many years now we’ve been signing papers, legal foo, etc, to ensure that all the data/IP/structure belongs to the clients (although that’s not always been necessary).

I’ll happily agree that many agencies don’t do this. Equally, I can happily prove that many agencies have been at this level for years.

VCCP aren’t the first but hopefully all this drama will shine the spotlight brightly and force everyone else to keep up!

Either way, the issues are the same though and I entirely agree with your point about transparency. However, as this debate has demonstrated , one person’s transparency means a keyword report, anothers means account logins, anothers means a professional way of conducting an account transfer. I think this is an area where advertisers need help in terms of exactly what they should expect from a partner.

There’s no question that the optimal position in terms of transparency and the whole IP issue is ownership of the Google account by the advertiser and direct billing.

Talking to Google and speaking to our competitors in this space, I think we’re still very much in the minority with that view.

It’s good that VCCP is moving over to what we’ve considered best practice for the last seven years. Agencies that don’t give clients complete transparency will wither on the vine.

I think we have clarified that this move goes beyond ‘transparency’ in terms of logins or ‘allowing clients the right to retain the rights to their search keywords’. It also cuts through all the talk of best practice in terms of how agencies should behave when transferring a client’s account to a new partner.

In future, I think we’ll start to see clients insist that Google accounts are set up in their name. They will own the billing relationship and their account will simply sit in their agencies MCC. Right now, that’s just not the way that the major search or media agencies are set up. Agencies may well be transparent and allow their clients the rights to their own keywords, but that doesn’t go far enough and the only way for a client to be sure of this is to own the billing relationship. It’s a fundamental power shift in PPC from agencies to clients.

We have made that move and I’d be interested to hear if anyone else shares this view, has this set up or is planning to offer their clients this option.

I am CEO of Latitude and we agree with you that the foundations of long and mutually beneficial client relationships are built on transparency and trust. This is why Latitude, along with a number of other digital marketing agencies – some of whom we’ve heard here – offer clients the opportunity to retain the rights of the search keywords we purchase for them.

For a few more thoughts, see my blog post: http://tinyurl.com/amm4cm