Until now, the big Ad agencies had a huge advantage over you and SEM Experts when advertising on Google. A 15% advantage to be exact. From the 1st of January 2006, Google has levelled the playing field in the UK and Europe between ad-agencies, traditionally receiving a discount on Google Advertising and niche search marketers, who got nothing - even if their ad-spend was greater. The Ad agencies are up in arms, but the experts are sitting pretty.When Google started Adwords, they secretly offered a whopping 15% discount to ad agencies that could bring in the big advertising spend of the major brands. But they didn't offer the same privileges to SEO experts, who had to be at least 15% better to compete. Perhaps surprisingly, being 15% better than ad agencies was not hard for the experts, but what was hard was standing in front of prospective new clients and saying "we'll charge X% of Ad spend" when a bigger agency could say "we'll do it at cost". Tough sales pitch!But now the tables are turned. The commission has all but disappeared and the situation is far more transparent. You can expect many brands having to pay more for their adverts to be managed over the coming months - but beware - they'll probably get managed more effectively in the future!