Helpful Tips for Managing Agency Relationships Within Microsoft Advertising adCenter

SEO agencies that manage online ad campaigns and submissions for numerous advertisers are welcome on Bing and Yahoo! properties. Many small businesses don’t have the personnel or expertise to market their product, and hiring an agency can be a perfect solution for them; however, agencies that represent multiple clients can face several challenges. This article provides best practices for setting up agency-specific accounts and tips on how to provide consumers with complete privacy information.

Tip 1: Account Set Up

As an SEO agency, each of your clients should have their own unique customer ID. Many times, agency accounts are set up under one customer ID, with multiple account numbers (XID’s) each representing a different advertiser underneath it. To help ensure maximum opportunity for optimization, it is important that each advertiser under the larger agency umbrella is assigned an individual customer ID. Here are a few helpful links:

Getting Started FAQ

About Creating an adCenter Agency-Client Relationship

Manage Access to adCenter Accounts

Why is it worth the extra effort?

In adCenter, each account is assessed individually. Therefore, if a single advertiser account is disapproved for Editorial reasons, then only that account is impacted; if an account is composed of multiple advertiser accounts, closing the account would mean also closing the accounts of all the other advertisers within that account.

By the way, separating accounts by advertiser is a good practice not just to avoid the above example – there are major benefits. For example, the Editorial team often reviews advertiser campaigns and provides systematic solutions for accounts that have a clear, single business. Separating accounts by advertiser can also reduce or eliminate the time that a campaign spends in “Pending Review” status and it’s the only way to get approval for terms that would have upfront disapprovals. (For advice on upfront disapprovals, see this article).

In addition, separating accounts by advertiser will likely improve your overall quality scores. An advertiser with sought-after products, and a great landing page and user experience will not be hampered by lower-quality advertisers based on how they are grouped.

Tip 2: Privacy Policy

One of the most avoidable agency issues is the absence of a complete privacy policy on sites that ask consumers for personal information. Sites designed by agencies tend to be clear and complete, and include a privacy policy that describes how consumer information is used; however, some smaller businesses often don’t realize that this is a requirement. For example, sites inviting visitors to use their email or other personal information to sign up for a newsletter are commonly disapproved due to the lack of a privacy policy. This is a critical guideline to follow, because, if a site is disapproved, it impacts all of the campaigns associated with that site.

As a best practice, before entering a new client’s campaign into AdCenter, a quick check to make sure they have a privacy policy helps avoid larger problems further on – especially if personal information is being collected.