See UPDATE at end for latest on this.
Well this is not what I wanted to start my day off with today. I had already planned to talk about “Getting The Support You Need” as today’s PPC Chat live chat topic. It appears I was a bit clairvoyant on that being a good discussion topic.
If you have not yet heard, Google Ads is now requiring advertisers to check a box that grants Google Ads representatives the ability to make changes in your account in order to get out of the AI beta support and get to a human. You read that right. And to make it worse, it specifically states that Google is also not responsible for what happens as a result of any changes they make in the account. Lovely.
Here is what the checkbox says:
As I tweeted, I have SO MANY QUESTIONS about this:
- What changes are being authorized – it says “changes above” but it is for a create a ticket form – there are no changes specified?
- How and/or will those changes be denoted in the change history?
- Why is this now necessary to access human support at a time when support is at its all time worst already?
- How long does this authorization to make changes last?
- Can the advertiser revoke it?
- Is it only one agent from Google Ads that is authorized or is it a blanket authorization?
- Will advertisers be specifically notified in a timely manner if a Google rep makes changes to the account and what was changed?
- Do Google reps have to ask specific permission to make a change or does this grant them carte blanche to make changes?
- Is the authorization limited to the campaign being asked about?
- Will account level settings be adjusted without notification? As these will impact other campaigns that are not part of the support ticket request.
Notice how Google shifts all responsibility onto the advertiser too? It’s time to update your contract language folks and probably your errors and omissions (E&O) insurance terms too. Do we have to let clients know – hey we need to get some support for something that’s not working right in Google Ads, but to do so we have to agree to let them change stuff in the account?
Advertisers and PPC pros need clarity on this ASAP. If this is to be the new process, it needs to be spelled out very specifically and there need to be answers to the questions I posed above.
Do you have questions about this? Have you had to give this authorization?
Search Engineland has a write up on this change.
UPDATE: Ginny Marvin responded to me and original poster saying this isn’t new and is only if you ask for rep to make changes?
