cline - 11:30 pm on Feb 23, 2004 (gmt 0)

I'd like to see Adwords extend the traditional media discount ad agencies receive to those of us who make a living convincing clients they should advertise on Adwords, and seting up and managing their campaigns.

Obviously, this would be to the benefit of folks like me, but it would also be to the benefit of Adwords, too. Here are some reasons:

1. Professionals understand better how to do keyword targeting and to use all those complicated targeting features. Better Adwords targeting means more relevant results for users.

I have clients who find the - " " [ ] bit almost impossible to understand. That may seem unbelievable to all those Ph.D.s at Google, but there are some people who manage to have thriving online businesses without being able to readily understand such logic. This makes for more relevant results. For example, I have one client whose only form of advertising is Adwords and Overture. He set up his campaigns himself and ran them for months beforing hiring me to redo them. His most important keyword is a word that has two very different meanings. A bit of keyword research gave me a basket full of words that went with one meaning and not the other. He was even aware of many of the most common of these terms based on common usage. Did his Adwords targeting screen for them? No. All he did was simple broad matching. He knew he wasn't getting all he could out of Adwords, but he couldn't figure out how to do it after months of playing with it. He's not a stupid guy. He runs a nice profitable business. It was just too convoluted and too time consuming for him to figure it out himself.

2. Professionals reduce Adwords' customer service costs. We know what we're doing, so we ask fewer dumb questions. And if the client has a question, they ask us -- not Adwords customer service.

3. Campaigns accidentlly go dark with the client responsible for direct payment. Most of my clients that pay Adwords directly have had at some time or another a problem with their credit card causing them to go dark for a few days. I have 2 clients whose Adwords I pay for directly, then bill them. Since I'm responsible for ensuring their ads are online, I ensure that they never go dark. Also, if I were to get paid for ensuring they never went dark, one could be doubly sure that going dark would never happen.

4. Professionals create bigger campaigns. For example, the clients who have turned over their home-built campaigns to me have always end up spending more on Adwords because they've missed so many advertising opportunities. Professional campaigns produce more revenue for Adwords.

5. It takes effort to convince clients they should run Adwords. We're selling Adwords for you, and making the adertiser pay us for the sales effort. Couldn't there be a more fair system?