Hi (newbie to the forum - be gentle!)

Just a query with regards to gaining information on competitors.

A client has recently mentioned that their own research suggets that Google and Overture may be able to divulge information on their their competitors budgets and the like (our clients competitors not Google or Overture).

As far as I am aware, Google certainly, only offers extra assistance once your Adwords budget hits £3k a month?

Can anyone shed some light / assistance with this??

Gratefully received! :)

Personally, I have serious doubts as to whether Google or Yahoo would share this information.

We're platinum customers and have never been offered this kind of information.

>A client has recently mentioned that their own research suggets that Google and Overture may be able to divulge information on their their competitors budgets and the like (our clients competitors not Google or Overture).

I seriously doubt it.

www.adgooroo.com has some interesting tools.

A client has recently mentioned that their own research suggets that Google and Overture may be able to divulge information on their their competitors budgets and the like (our clients competitors not Google or Overture). Poppy, I can only speak for Google of course, but I can assure you that no information about our advertisers, of any kind, is made available. The thought that such information might be available to higher spenders is simply not correct.

AWR

PS - I notice that you're new to the Forum, Poppy, and thus you may not know that I work at Google with the AdWords team. In my three years on the team, I've been asked for information about competitors dozens of times. And the answer is always the same: a polite but very firm "Sorry, no".

I can assure you that no information about our advertisers, of any kind, is made available.

It may not be a "high spenders" issue, but reps will most certainly offer information that they believe has worked for your competitors. Since Google has broken reps into vertical market focus, reps can't help but work with accounts that compete. It's the very nature of vertical markets.

You expect me to believe that reps will not draw on situations they have learned through one advertiser and use that to help another?

If not, then really what help are they?

I completely disagree with the vertical markets thing. I hate sharing info with my rep and sometimes hearing her say, "well for other ticket sellers, I have seen X" ...or, "some of your competitors have done XYZ to solve that problem"

Isn't breaking these reps into vertical market focus a bit of a conflict of interest? Do I really want my rep working with other ticket sellers as well ...at the very same time? ...on the very same days? ...on probably many of the very same issues?

at the very least, it makes me uncomfortable. Reps are human and are bound to form relationships ...even go as far as flirting and favoring. Hey - it's human nature - and even the folks at Google aren't immune to being played.

again, it's disconcerting to have competitors sharing reps. it's just odd.

...as an example to the above, Radio stations or TV stations never have one rep who handles both the coke account and the pepsi account

nor the budweiser account and the coors account.

conflicts of interest.

Reps are human and are bound to form relationships ...even go as far as flirting and favoring. Hey - it's human nature - and even the folks at Google aren't immune to being played.

again, it's disconcerting to have competitors sharing reps. it's just odd.

Agreed. Account rep meetings can drift towards fishing trips with the reps attempting to avoid sensitive competitive info while still providing as much useful industry data as possible. Vice versa on our side as we stay away from sensitive conversion/CPA data. Who knows if they'll ever reveal to competitor X our CPA rate of $Y? AWR, I understand the obvious company line but the truth is as Sebastian says, reps are only human :)

This is also the reason we won't use Urchin. Do you really want Google to know where your traffic is going and what your conversion and CPA rates are compared to competitors? How long people stay at your site? Your best site pathing for conversions?

Wow, you guys are great!

I did very much doubt competitor info would ever be released (data protection and all that), but felt I should clarify it!

I also emailed Overture and Google and had similar responses as suspected.

Thank you all :)

Oh, Adgooroo - is that just US based? Does it cover the UK at all, the site makes me think no?

Thank'yees