AccuraCast reports receiving an email from the Google Dublin office that they are cutting all AdWords agency support. He wrote:
Google AdWords' Dublin support team sent out an email to their agency partners, yesterday, stating that dedicated account management support for agencies will be stopped in the new year.
I have emailed Google for confirmation and will let you know more details as soon as I get them.
We do know that in December of 2009, Google reportedly made huge cuts to their agency support. Since then, I have not heard much more on the topic until now.
As AccuraCast said in the Search Engine Watch Forums, is this also happening in other countries? I am not sure.
Brian from the forums said his AdWords representative told him they are "off-shoring most of their agency reps to India." He added, "All questions are filter to the appropriate teams, instead of just getting responses from your representative." He said this is the path Google has been going in the US.
In the comments on Frank Watson's post David Rothwell posted part of the email he received:
Announcing an Enhanced Agency Service Model - Effective January 1st 2011Your accounts will still be managed across London and Dublin, as they are now, but you will have a single agency team managing your business here in London who will support all your activity with Google across both offices.
So it is not clear exactly what will be changing and I hope to clear it up soon.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums and Sphinn.
Update: Google sent me a statement that confirmed changes are happening. It is happening the US and the UK, as well as other areas. They said they feel this change will help more advertisers have better service. It does seem like some agencies will still have a dedicated rep, but some will lose their reps. Here is their statement:
We are changing the structure of agency support in order to better scale and align our team with the vertical expertise and focus area of our agency partners; better partnership means higher impact for our shared clients. This realignment will help our team to give agencies more relevant insights for their clients, and to provide service to a larger portion of smaller accounts.We’ve transitioned some of our support resources in an effort to provide everyone with the service they need to resolve issues and give advertisers the best possible support. This realignment will help our team to give agencies more relevant insights for their clients, and to provide service to a larger portion of smaller accounts.
Overall, we’ve increased our investment in agencies; there are more dedicated agency leads focused on strategic partnerships with agencies, and working with agencies to drive the industry forward.
One set of agencies will have a dedicated agency lead; specific accounts within those agencies will have dedicated vertical account management teams, who can offer industry-specific expertise. A second set of agencies will not have an assigned agency team, but will be able to receive support via phone.
