One of the chief complaints of search engine marketing (SEM) agencies is that Google favors the big spenders with traditional business models when it comes to setting up an advertising campaign. In Europe, at least, that appears to be changing as Google releases its European Third Party program effective in January of 2006.
The program is designed to empower third party advertisers, often smaller SEM companies that don’t have as good of a foothold in the advertising market as traditional advertising agencies with long established media buying presence. The larger agencies can provide search engines like Google with reams of advertisers with big budgets.
These agencies, that may bring hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to Google, have had an automatic advantage. In Europe, but not in the US, Overture, Espotting, and Google have given some form of a discount to agencies that bring in more business. As a result, SEM firms have often complained that Google seems to favor the big boys, by offering them financial incentives and support.
The new European program aims to reform that structure.
“Google’s new program empowers third parties to more efficiently and effectively serve their clients. Third parties are critical to the success of advertisers and to Google and we have designed an approach that favours both,” says Nikesh Arora, Vice President of European Operations at Google.
“We firmly believe that it is important to preserve the integrity of the channel in terms of marketing effectiveness and advertiser perception. By fostering greater equality across Google’s auction model, advertisers of all sizes can more effectively compete against each other,” Arora said in a prepared statement provided courtesy of Danny Sullivan.
Qualifying companies will receive the following benefits:
Tools to increase third party efficiency and effectiveness
Training and market research
Process enhancements such as wholesale upgrades to our commercial processes to ensure that our processes are aligned to our third party business models
Extended service and technical support
A quarterly best practice funding program for investment in training and platforms which aims to provide financial support for those third parties who fulfill our quality and investment scale criteria
Whether to say the new program offers a discount or agency commission is a semantic squabble. Sullivan reports that Google does not consider the financial incentives (“payments tied to business brought in or grown tiered to a maximum of 12 percent) to be commission. Google prefers the phrase, “best practice funding element.”
It is still unclear as to why a similar program is not offered in the US. For further information, check out the SearchEngineWatch forum thread, or start a new discussion in WebProWorld.
