Can I have 2 identical campaigns for different clients?

[nikhilm]

I'm managing PPC campaigns for 2 clients in the same industry and I was wondering if it was possible to have 2 identical campaigns (same adgroups and keywords but different ads and landing pages)?

In fact, I have already set it up this way, but searching for the keywords only shows one ad or the other, but never both.

[netmeg]

Right, because if they're in the same account, they're competing with each other.

(don't you find that to be a conflict of interest between your clients?)

[nikhilm]

Thanks netmeg for the quick response. I'm new to webmasterworld and I'm hoping to become a part of the community here :)

The clients work together so we don't really have a conflict of interest.

So keywords in the same account compete with eachother even though they're in different campaigns?

[netmeg]

Yep. They actually compete with each other regardless, but in the same account, AdWords will only show one or the other.

[LucidSW]

If you manage accounts for others in Adwords, you should get a MCC account (My Client Center). That should work, unless that's what Netmeg is talking about, but it doesn't sound like it.

Personally, I would not have two or more clients in the same industry where they compete on the same keywords. Conflict of interest. Plus, it's not that easy to come up with different ads for each client and try to get the highest click rates possible for each.

Your situation sounds different as you say they both work together, somehow. Still, I'd watch out. Divorces can be messy.

[James_WV]

I've never had to do this before, but I may be in this situation soon. I know it's not the best situation but the company I work for is starting a separate site for accommodation that it now owns rather than acts as an agent for and will want to advertise both sites using the same keywords - can I do this through MCC, setting up 2 different accounts?

[LucidSW]

Two separate accounts will do this, no problem. However, the situation you describe is against Google's TOS. One person or company cannot own two accounts for exactly the reason you describe.

Just to be on safe side, I recommend using one account. You will be able to show only one ad for one of the sites at a time. But you won't run the risk of having both accounts terminated for TOS violation.