The End Of BPF - Bring on a Pitch Frenzy?

It’s just under 4 weeks to Christmas, a scary enough thought in itself but to those of us immersed in the search world it signals just 4 weeks left for Google BPF.

Since the announcement 15 months ago there’s been much commentary about the implications for clients, agencies and search budgets in general.

Google BPF - Will We Miss It?

Publicly most of the large agencies announced the decision was “welcomed”, one going as far as to say, “ it is in line with our proposals”.

But let’s be realistic here.

Best Practice Funding hasn’t in all cases been used by agencies to fund best practice. Many of the big players have in fact used it as a sweetener for clients, passing it in part or in whole back to them.

Some agencies have even hosted clients’ accounts under their MCC to qualify for the BPF, passed back a percentage of the BPF to the clients yet not actively manage the accounts on the clients’ behalves (but we’ll leave that one there!).

Ultimately, clients that are currently receiving a percentage of the BPF are going to have to pay more to get the same service next year. So what does this mean for agencies, clients and the search budgets?

Implications of Google Abolishing BPF

• This will fuel some clients to debate whether or not they should bring their search marketing in-house. We’ve already seen a number of clients take this decision, no doubt encouraged by a) the fact that many agencies aren’t transparent with the search data they share b) the reluctance of some agencies to handover an account to another agency (therefore losing all their account history and quality score) c) the same tools are available to clients to run their accounts directly and many think they can do as good a job
• Agencies will have to start charging more and really justify their added value / cut back on overheads – we’ve already seen one of the market leaders make substantial redundancies earlier this year
• Search spend could decrease as clients have to find additional funds to support the increase in agency fees
• SEO spend will increase. Whilst the overall SEO spend in the UK is still dwarfed by the PPC spend, its’ growth shows no sign of dwindling as more and more clients wise up to the long-term benefits of a damn good SEO programme
• We could (and I’d be inclined to say are likely to) see an increased amount of search business up for pitch as clients renegotiate fees / want to ensure they are getting the best service and expertise available to them if it’s going to be costing them more in fees

One thing’s for sure, there is change afoot in search land and no doubt a shake up for some agencies.

But even in these troubled economic times, where advertising budgets will no doubt be cut back country-wide, if you’re doing search well the return more than justifies the investment and search should be the last thing feeling the pinch.

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