Permission to use multiple accounts

What if you do SEM for multiple clients in the same niche?

[Damian]

My company runs two Adwords accounts, to be able to service different clients in the same niche. Multiple accounts are required to be able to bid on the same keywords for these otherwise very different companies. As we now wanted to place ads for a third client within a particular niche I called the local Google sales office today. "Confessed" the two accounts, and asked if I could get official permission to run these two accounts plus a new one. They logged in to my two accounts and asked a few questions about specific campaigns, so they should know we do not abuse having the multiple accounts.

The answer was 'no', permission is not possible.
We spend more then the minimum required for premium advertisers, but we don't qualify as premium advertisers because the budget is spend on multiple clients/websites I was told, so that didn't help much. The person I spoke to mentioned that it would 'probably' be ok but he could not guarantee anything. He said he would expect the editors (who are in another office in another country) to let it 'pass'. I asked what would happen if it was not ok, would it mean I would have to let down my clients and would they make an effort to find an alternative solution in that case? He didn't know, according to him it was possible the accounts were simply closed for running multiple accounts if an editor felt like it.
I like to think the editors will look at the account, see it's legitimate and let it pass. The many threads about accounts being blocked and the trouble to get them re-opened is a situation I would like to avoid though, I don't want to explain to my clients that we are being blocked pending investigation or something similar..

For my company it means that it's a risk to sign a contract that promises to manage Adwords campaigns for a client during a specific period, we may not be able to live up to it. I wonder if anyone here managed to get explicit permission to run multiple accounts, to be able to service multiple clients?

[skibum]

Yes. We work through Google directly on some accounts and each client has a different account through us.

[cline]

Permission? You *asked* for permission?

I've got a gaggle of accounts for various clients. Never asked permission.

[eWhisper]

I make a new account for each client, so run a lot of accounts, and G has never questioned this.

Although, if they do make a contact interface - might suprise G if people fill them out properly how many people have several accounts.

However, I never run campaigns for competing clients - and have refused many people because of this.

[chrisk999]

I've run two accounts together for a while now for accounting convenience.

Google contacted me last year about it, but said it was fine, so long as the two accounts didn't run the same campaigns in tandem.

It's not a problem, but they do flag it up and check you're not abusing the system.

[colinirwin]

As long as you aren't using multiple accounts to target the same keywords for the same client then I don't think you are doing anything wrong.

We've got about 20 accounts running at the moment & we've never had any problems. Some of these accounts have overlapping keywords, but as they are for different websites there are no problems.

Col

[vibgyor79]

Damian - Who is paying for the clicks received? You or your clients? That is, who do you have in your account billing details?

I would suggest opening multiple accounts for each of your clients but make sure they enter their own credit card details. You can bill them seperately for your campaign management fee.

If Google does figure out that you are accessing multiple accounts, you can always point out the the billing details are different and that the URL promoted are different.