Advertisers Should be Wary of Google Partners in the Near Future

Being partners with Google often feels like being in an abusive relationship. I have previously written about Google's slapping the face of advertisers and a steady degradation of trust in Google to do the right thing. And it's unsurprising Google continues this trend with the reported rollout of changes to the Google Partners Program.

The reported changes include Google evaluating partners on how frequently they apply Google recommendations to accounts in their Google Ads Manager. Of course this is absurd because Google recommendations are generally geared to making Google more money (add these keywords, increase budgets) or training Google's automation (switch to conversion optimizer) and generally not geared to making the advertiser more money.

Despite Google's best efforts, Google simply does not understand B2B advertisers where some conversions are worth more than others, and getting a user to fill out a form is different than making a sale.

Google is ill-equipped for longer sales cycles and managing attribution that happens at tradeshows and road shows or as part of ABM efforts. Google cannot grasp how nurturing campaigns, assigned rep/territory, chat bot interaction, phone call, or warm referral impacts marketing campaigns.

Google only understands a narrow view of an advertiser's marketing campaigns; therefore, Google is not equipped to provide recommendations. Under no circumstances should Google be enforcing their partner agencies to implement these changes. Continued pressure to adopt optimizations that are in Google's best interests rather than the advertiser's best interests is an ethical nightmare.

Obility remains a Google Premier Partner, but in the long-term I can see agencies positioning themselves against Google partners. What agency would want to work with a company with such a blatant conflict of interest? It's the same argument against agencies who charge a percentage of spend. Why work with an agency who is incentivized by you spending more money rather than you hitting your goals?

The backlash has already started with Cypress North creating a Client Partners badge and is sure to continue when the rollout begins in June.

Gone are the days of Google agency support. Obility has enjoyed every individual we have worked with at Google, but Google policies completely hamper the relationship. It's near impossible to get ad review support, access to betas, or help troubleshooting tracking issues without also getting a sales pitch to spend more money on YouTube or add more campaign automation.

One of these days, a majority of top agencies are going to decide it's simply not worth it.