Clients receiving unwanted notifications when added as “email only” users under the new Google Adwords MCC report interface

Recently Google has upgraded its Google Adwords MCC reporting centre. There is a major change that will effect Adwords agencies. You can no longer schedule reports to anyone by entering their email into a “send to” box. This is pretty annoying and as it turns out, buggy and unusable.

The solution offered by Adwords: You must add clients as “email only” users under your MCC profile in the access tab. Clients must now accept an invitation to receive reports from Google and create a Google to download the scheduled reports.

Firstly the invitation step is a huge logistical problem because most clients will have difficulty with this step. They might think it is spam, many can’t be bothered creating a Google account and what happens when the staff member receiving the report leaves? How will the next staff member get the report?

While I was willing to overlook to problems caused by the invitation step (because there is no other choice), I went ahead and invited a test group of my new clients to recieve reports under the new MCC reporting system. I set them up as email only users, I was meticulous in turning off all notifications.

The next day I got several emails from confused clients. Some how they had been copied in on an Adwords notification only I should receive. The notification? When I link a new account to my MCC. Even worse all “email only” users were copied into the email, exposing each of my individual clients to my other client accounts with direct emails…

It appears that “core” notifications such as a new account linked under my MCC are still being delivered to all users (even email only users with all notifications disabled).  Of-course this makes scheduling client reports impossible, as to have them see these kind of emails on a daily basis would just be ridiculous, not to mention unprofessional.

I have contacted adwords support and they are investigating the matter, but it appears this is a real bug. It is a bug that is so critical it stops any adwords agency from using the MCC client reporting system to send reports to clients..

If anyone has a similar problem or knows a workaround please let me know.