One of the perks, in the past, of being a Google Certified Reseller meant that you got free API access and were able to use that cost savings competitively or pass it along to advertisers in some fashion. However Google shut down the Reseller program amid a number of concerns about how resellers were positioning and representing its products to advertisers.
Some publishers said the loss of that free API access would put them at a disadvantage by impacting their margins on the many thousands of small PPC campaigns they were running. But the preferred API pricing is not gone for good apparently.
This morning SEM platform provider KENSHOO announced that it now has “preferred” API pricing from Google:
Today KENSHOO announces that its two paid search platforms, KENSHOO Search and KENSHOO Local, have both been approved for Preferred AdWords API Pricing. Acceptance into the program means that KENSHOO will receive free API units based on managed client spend, thereby significantly reducing API costs for KENSHOO advertisers and agencies running paid search campaigns on Google AdWords and freeing clients to deepen their use of advanced functionalities.
I asked the company who else had this status in the market and was told that only Marin Software did. At the “high end” KENSHOO competes directly with Marin. Its local product most directly competes with Clickable.
Kenshoo recently added “Call Conversion Optimization” to its platform.
