Google Ads MCC Account: How to Share Remarketing Lists across Sub-Accounts

There are plenty of challenges to running a successful PPC campaign as it is. Of course, if you manage PPC accounts for multiple clients, you have an uphill battle.  Dealing with the details and management of multiple accounts is time-consuming and can cause mistakes.

Thankfully, Google realized this and created a tool called My Client Center (MCC). This allows you to manage all of your Google Ads accounts from one place. Whether you have multiple brands, work for an agency, or advertise for numerous clients, it can be an incredible tool for productivity.

We’ll discuss the benefits of the Google Ads MCC account and how it works in this article. And we’ll go over who should or shouldn’t use this account type. That way, you can understand the best way to utilize MCC for your specific workflow. Let’s get started:

What is a Google Ads MCC account?

MCC provides an alternative to the manual method of using multiple Google Ads accounts from different clients. It combines them all under the umbrella of one account. You can add as many accounts as you need, and it’s a powerful tool for saving time in your daily workflow and customer onboarding.

Why use an MCC account?

With an MCC account you can:

• Use a single sign in to access all client Google Ads accounts, including other manager accounts.
• Search, navigate and manage all of your accounts from a single, easy-to-read dashboard.
• Create and manage campaigns for your client accounts from within your manager account.
• Easily compare performance across all accounts and run reports for multiple accounts at once.
• Use consolidated billing to get just one simple monthly invoice for all of your client accounts.
• Use alerts to monitor all of your linked accounts efficiently.
• Quickly create and link Google Ads accounts from within your manager account.

 

 

How Does a Google Ads MCC account Work?

An MCC account isn’t merely an “enhanced” version of your Google Ads account – it’s an entirely different account that you must create. In essence, MCC is a catch-all Google Ads account that has several other accounts linking to it.

You can link your new or existing Google Ads account to your MCC account, including other manager accounts. From here, you can access helpful features like updating campaigns, monitoring ad performance, and other account tasks.

Your clients can even give you ownership of their client account. And from there, you can assign and manage users. This lets you manage accounts more effectively. However, keep in mind that you can’t change proprietary information for a client account, such as their sign-in information.

Individual Account Owner Experience

Once an account is linked to a Google Ads MCC account, the individual user of the client’s account can still sign in and use the account as normal. Client accounts won’t have access to the manager account, however. Yet, users with administrative access will have the ability to unlink their accounts from MCC at any time.

Inviting Other Users to the Manager Account

Luckily, you can invite others to be a part of the manager’s account. This is incredibly useful when you have multiple team members that need to manage parts of the account or take turns during different shifts.

 

Who Should Use a Manager Account?

If you only run one or two accounts, it might not make sense to use MCC just yet. Instead, you might want to focus on growing your agency first. However, it can be a great option for large advertisers, marketing consultants, or agencies to manage a large number of accounts. You can learn about PPC optimization tools for agencies.

Also, keep in mind that a single email address can be used for up to 20 Google Ads accounts. This includes manager accounts. However, this doesn’t make much sense in practice because you still have to log in and out of the accounts first.

One option is to link two Google Ads MCC accounts together. For instance, if you have a search engine marketing (SEM) company with hundreds of clients, then they each might have an MCC account for the company. Therefore, you can simply have them link these preexisting MCC accounts to give you the ability to edit them. In the meantime, high ranking team members can monitor what’s happening at other levels.

How to Create an MCC Account

Creating an MCC account can be done within minutes. Here is a step by step procedure to create an MCC manager account:

• Visit the official page of MCC in Google Ads here: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/manager-accounts/.
• Click on ‘Create a manager account’ and enter the email address.
• Give a name to the account and select any one of the options given in how you plan to use it.
• After that, you need to select the time zone and location.
• Click on the currency that you want to set to run the campaigns.
• Accept the terms and conditions to continue.
• Click on save, and that’s it. Your MCC account will be created.

 

MCC Tips to Consider

When you create an MCC manager account, there are a few things to keep in mind that will make your life easier:

• Login Details are Not Required – Only a ten-digit customer ID number (xxx-xxx-xxxx) is required to link Google ads account to an MCC. This allows clients to feel confident, allowing agencies to handle their accounts without giving over private information like banking details.
• You Can Review and Manage Accounts from a Single Screen – Change budgets, view alerts, and locate accounts immediately from a single screen. Learn to embrace using the dashboard instead of clicking around to different areas.
• New Email – you must use a new email address that is not already being used for a Google Ads MCC account.
• Choose Your Time Zone Wisely – once you select your time zone, it can’t be changed.
• Choose Your Currency Wisely – your currency selection is permanent, so make sure it aligns with your company or market location.

 

How to Link an MCC Manager Account to Google Ads Account?

You don’t need to login to your client’s Google Ads account. You can control the campaigns of your clients from your MCC account. Just follow these steps below and send a request to the client to manage their Google Ads account from MCC:

• Log-in to your Google Ads MCC account.
• Click on ‘Link Existing Buttons,’ next to the ‘create an account’ button.
• Enter the client’s Google ads ID (displayed on the top right corner of the page) in the client accounts box. Click on continue.
• Once you enter the Google ads ID, the client will receive a request in the Google ads account.
• The client has to accept the request, which appears in account access settings of Google Ads.
• There are three types of access that the client can give: administrator, edit, and view.
• If the client accepts the request as an administrator, you will now have complete access to manage the client’s Google ads account from your MCC manager account.

 

Benefits of an MCC Manager Account

By creating MCC, Google helped advertisers in numerous ways. Let’s look at some of the truly powerful benefits that an MCC account can provide.

Manage Multiple Campaigns

A simple dashboard interface allows users to manage everything without hassle. You can create a campaign, create an ad group, or link a new account within seconds.

View the History

Keeping track of multiple account histories can be a pain. Luckily, MCC makes this easy to accomplish in one place.

Secure and Better Organization

Staying organized is crucial for PPC managers. You need to know where all your clients’ accounts are, their status, and how to efficiently run analytical reports.

Multiple Client Reporting

By using an MCC, you can access additional Google Ads features. For instance, Manager Defined Spend (MDS) billing is a way for you to deal with multiple budgets on a single invoice. This is especially useful when a client has budgets that need to be updated consistently for different seasons or other reasons.

Performance Measurement

No matter what, measuring performance should be a top priority. If you don’t know where you are and where you’ve been, you can’t improve it for the future. An MCC will allow you to use the Client Reporting tool. This interface lets you see reports from multiple clients all at once.

This is a great tool for assessing your agency from a higher level. You might even want to see trends across an industry, which is possible if you have multiple clients in the same field. You can also empower account managers to run account reports for the accounts that only they manage.

Advanced Filtering and Segmentation

Client reporting doesn’t just allow for reports across multiple clients. It also helps make filtering and data segmentation easier. When you create a report within Client Reporting, you can layer your segments across multiple accounts.

You can also combine segments with filters to get even more granular in your data analysis. For instance, say you want to see all the enhanced campaigns with invalid click rates greater than 10% by the day of the week and device in the ecommerce space. You could achieve that with the following settings:

• Report Type: Campaign Performance
• Segments: Device & Day of week
• Accounts: Select applicable accounts
• Filters: Network, Enhanced, Invalid clicks >10%

If you are looking for detail insights and reports for your account, you must try PPCexpo Reporting Tool.

As a PPC manager, you need the right tools to streamline your process. When you have to deal with logins and information from multiple client accounts, it quickly becomes overwhelming. That’s why my MCC is so powerful.

By understanding and using MCC in the right way, you can save time and hassle. That way, you can focus on what you truly excel at: giving your clients great PPC results. So whether it is reporting, account overviews, filters, or any other aspect of PPC marketing, consider if MCC is a more efficient way to accomplish your goals.

Today, remarketing is one of the most effective strategies to increase sales. The basic concept of remarketing is simple – you focus on building a relationship with people that have already engaged your business, as they are more receptive to brand messaging from brands they know. By targeting these leads, you can reduce your cost per acquisition, increase conversions, and earn a much higher return on advertising spend (ROAS).

When you have a Google Ads manager account, you can take advantage of remarketing on a large scale by sharing your remarketing lists across multiple sub-accounts. Google Ads makes this easy through a feature called continuous audience sharing, which you can find within your Google Ads manager account.

In this article, we’ll show you how this feature works, and how you can use it to do more with remarketing through your Google Ads manager account.

 

What is Continuous Audience Sharing?

Previously, there were several steps involved to share audience lists from a Google Ads manager account to sub-accounts. Now, it’s as simple as toggling an opt-in switch, which you’ll find in the settings panel.

All you need to do is log in to your Google Ads manager account, navigate to Setting > Manager account setting, then check & Sub-account settings, then check the box for Continuous audience sharing.

 

 

How does Continuous Audience Sharing Work?

Once you opt-in to continuous audience sharing, any remarketing lists that you create in your Google Ads manager account will automatically be shared with all existing and future sub-accounts.

Accounts can receive lists from multiple Google Ads manager accounts, and you can control which audience lists are active. As of March 2020, sub-accounts cannot share audience lists with manager accounts, but Google Ads may add this option in the future.

Why is Google Adding the Continuous Audience Sharing Feature?

Let’s say you have a Google Ads manager account for a real estate business. With this new feature, you can share audiences from your account to another client’s account in the same niche. You can do this by going to My Client Center (MCC), where new clients onboard.

Continuous audience sharing makes it easy to share audiences between the accounts in MCC, so you can quickly build a target audience for a new client, and reach a wider group of prospects with shorter lead time and less advertising spend.

What to Know Before Remarketing List Sharing

In a Google Ads manager account, you can share tags and remarketing lists with some, or all, of its Google Ads accounts or sub-manager accounts. Keep in mind that manager accounts will need permission from individual clients before they can share remarketing lists from a client’s account.

You’ll need administrative access and authority to use the Google Ads manager account, and then you can complete the entire process.

 

How to Share Audience Lists Using Your Google Ads Manager Account

If your remarketing lists already appear in MCC, you can skip this step and go directly to Step #2, below.

Within MCC, you can share remarketing lists to other sub-accounts in Google Ads in one of two ways – automatically or manually. By doing it automatically, all accounts receive the lists. On the other hand, manual sharing enables you to choose specific accounts.

How to Share Audience Lists From Specific Sub-accounts to MCC (Sending Lists Upwards)

Step 1: Enable lists to be shared in your Google Ads Manager Account

When you’re using a Google Ads manager account, and you want to access and share remarketing lists owned by client accounts, you need to enable list sharing in each client account.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Sign in to the client account.
2. In the upper-right corner of the client account, select the tools icon.
3. Navigate to Shared library > Audience manager.
4. From the page menu on the left-hand side, select Settings.

(Note that the Settings link will only be available if the sub-account is in the manager’s sharing pool. In the Google Ads manager account, you can opt-in for continuous sharing mode, which will pull all the sub-accounts into the sharing pool. Otherwise, you can set the Audience manager account so that specific sub-accounts can join the manager’s sharing pool).

5. Under Remarketing list access, switch on the toggle to share your remarketing lists. A blue toggle indicates that list sharing is active, while a grey toggle indicates that list sharing is inactive.

 

Step 2: Add lists to the Manager Account Sharing Pool

Follow the steps below to add remarketing lists to the sharing pool of a Google Ads manager account:

1. In the upper-right corner of the manager account, select the tools icon.
2. Navigate to Shared library > Audience manager.
3. Select the plus button, then select Add list from an account.
4. Next, navigate to Select an account, and choose the specific Ads account that contain the audience lists you require.
5. Select all current lists to add all of the remarketing lists from the selected accounts. To select only some lists, choose Select specific lists.
6. Click Save. All accounts with a Remarketing account set to the name of their actual Audience Manager will soon get access to these remarketing lists, typically within a few hours. After that, you can share audience lists with MCC.

 

How to Share Lists From MCC to All Other Sub-accounts (Sending Lists Downwards)

You have two options when sending lists down the chain of command – you can either share remarketing lists with all sub-accounts or just with specific sub-accounts.

Option A: Share lists with all sub-accounts (automatic)

1. Sign in to your Google Ads manager account.
2. From the page menu on the left-hand side, select Settings.
3. Check the box next to Add this manager as an audience manager for all sub-accounts to share lists from this manager account to all sub-accounts.

Option B: Share specific sub-accounts to receive lists (manually)

1. Log in to your MCC.
2. From the page menu on the left-hand side, navigate to Accounts > Management.
3. In the Audience Manager account column, change account manager to the name of the Google Ads manager account you wish to receive lists. Leave the other accounts that you don’t want to share marked as None.

 

7 Key Aspects of Sharing Re-marketing Lists Across Accounts

1. Can client account see the list?: Remarketing lists owned by a manager account, or shared with a manager account, will be shared and accessible for all client accounts that are set to “This manager” under the same “Remarketing account.”
2. Who can edit the list? Only the owner of a shared list can edit it.
3. How does changes in list impact? Any changes made to a shared list will be applied across accounts.
4. What about video remarketing list? The sharing of Video remarketing lists, DoubleClick (DFA) lists, or licensed lists is currently not supported.
5. What about Google Analytics list? To share Google Analytics lists, Google considers the Google Ads account to which the list was linked during setup. You can see the status of Google Analytics in the “Audience sources” tab of Audience Manager.
6. What about list sharing for dynamic remarketing? List sharing happens automatically for dynamic remarketing dynamic attributes (custom parameters).
7. How list owner can see? List owners can see which accounts have access to their lists by going to “Audiences” in “Shared library.”

 

Common Scenarios when Sharing Lists with a Google Ads Manager Account

There are a few things to be aware of when using a Google Ads manager account. Consider these common scenarios:

1. What access do client accounts have after sharing?

If a manager account shares tags and lists with a client account, that client account will have access to any lists created within the manager account — including future lists. Conversely, if a client account shares lists with a manager account, the manager account is free to share those lists with all of its other client accounts.

2. What happens when remarketing tags are incorrectly configured?

If a remarketing tag isn’t correctly implemented, the tag won’t add website visitors to remarketing lists. This problem can stop your ads from showing, which will impact traffic. Any client accounts using these lists would be affected.

3. What happens if a client disables list sharing in their account?

If a client account disables list sharing, any campaign or ad groups in the other client accounts that use these shared lists will stop running. Also, these accounts will no longer be visible in your Audience manager.

4. What happens if a remarketing account gets transferred to another manager?

If the Remarketing account within a client account gets transferred from one manager account to another manager account, the client account will no longer have access to the original manager account tag or any of its associated remarketing lists. Any ad groups or campaigns in these accounts that use these lists will stop running as described in the previous point.

5. What happens when you remove a client account from sharing?

If a manager removes a client account from list sharing, the client account will lose access to the manager account’s tag and lists. If the client account was sharing their own lists, this change would affect ad groups and campaigns in other accounts that target these lists.

Wrap Up

The idea of running a Google Ads manager account may seem like a challenge too far for many people, especially if you face the prospect of overseeing multiple large sub-accounts. However, once you get familiar with the setup, you can leverage list sharing to build audiences for your clients through smart remarketing campaigns quickly.

When you’re ready to take your remarketing to the next level, read our blog to Master the Art of Dynamic Remarketing in Google Ads.