Why We Don’t Give Our Clients Access to the Google Ads Console

The Backstory: When Good Intentions Go Wrong

At 123 Online, we pride ourselves on building honest partnerships with our clients and delivering digital solutions that truly work. That includes managing successful, data-driven Google Ads campaigns.

One client’s story, however, highlighted a problem - what happens when well-meaning business owners, guided by external voices, start making changes to campaigns without the technical know-how to understand the impact.

We had set up and managed a Google Ads campaign for one client in particular. It was doing well, some months better than others, as is natural with any campaign. But performance began to dip unexpectedly. When we investigated, we discovered something crucial in the change history: the client had been making adjustments to the campaign. These weren’t minor edits either, they were significant enough to derail the finely tuned strategy we’d built.

So, what prompted the changes?

Persistent phone calls from Google’s outsourced support reps. While these reps may sound official, they aren’t always aligned with your best interests. At the end of the day, it's in Google's best interest for you to spend more money with them. Conversely, it's in our best interest for you to spend less money, tuning your campaign month-by-month to perform better, for the same spend or less. Our flat-rate management fees remain the same no matter what your budget is with Google. In our experience, the recommendations of Google's outsourced reps often lead to higher ad spend without better (often worse) results. Unfortunately, our client followed their advice and unknowingly sabotaged their own campaign.

What Happened Next

Eventually, the client moved on to another marketing company. From the outside, it may have seemed like a fresh start, but in reality, the core campaign strategy remained the same. The strong results they continued to receive were a reflection of the original foundation we had built.

All it took was leaving the campaign untouched to start seeing strong results again, the very ones our setup was designed to deliver and had been delivering before the well intentioned changes were made. Unfortunately, this gave the impression that the new provider had improved things, when in reality, it was our proven strategy doing the work.

Lessons Learned

This experience led us to formalise two key policies in order to protect both us and our clients:

1. We don't provide direct access to the Google Ads console.
   Not because we’re trying to hide anything, far from it. It’s about protecting the integrity of the campaign. Even the best strategy can be undone by a few uninformed tweaks, no matter how well-intentioned.
2. We protect our secret sauce.
   Our Google Ads campaigns aren’t built from templates, they’re the result of years of testing, refinement, and real-world performance. This strategy is our secret sauce - a proprietary approach that consistently gives our clients an edge over the competition by driving better-quality leads and more sales for the same, or even lower, ad spend. While we fully respect a client’s freedom to change agencies (and don't lock anyone into long-term contracts) we draw a clear line when it comes to our intellectual property. What makes our campaigns successful is the unique configuration and strategy behind them, and that’s not something we’re willing to hand over to our competition.

In Summary

We believe in transparency, accountability, and delivering real results. But that doesn’t mean opening the doors for anyone and everyone to tinker with something as delicate as a Google Ads campaign. When you work with 123 Online, you’re trusting us to do what we do best, and that means protecting your performance and our expertise at the same time.

Reach out to us if you'd like to know more