Mexico’s Law on Transparency, Prevention and Combat of Improper Practices Regarding the Advertising Market establishes a set of requirements for advertising agencies and advertising service providers (such as Google). Among its provisions is a requirement that Google must invoice any advertising costs directly to the end advertiser if the end advertiser has residence in Mexico and if ads are being displayed in Mexico. In addition, Google must provide reports including certain information to advertisers on their campaigns details.
Invoicing Obligations: must invoice any advertising costs directly to the end advertiser
Customers using Monthly Invoicing payment setting
If Google currently invoices the agency as the primary* financially responsible party – billed and invoiced on behalf of an advertiser – moving forward to comply with the new law, these Google Ads accounts will be required to be changed to bill the advertiser as the primary financially responsible party while the agency can be included as a secondary** party to continue to manage billing on the advertiser’s behalf.
This primary/secondary billing change above requires a new billing format which is being developed by Google over the coming weeks for all customers in Mexico. Agencies will be notified via email once the new billing format is available, with the steps to follow to move to the new format (advertiser as primary billing party and agency as secondary).
What else changes when setting the advertiser as the primary party and the agency as secondary party?
| Primary* | Secondary** | |
|---|---|---|
| Details to which facturas, complemento de pago and notas de credito will be issued | ||
| Details included in Commercial invoices (not valid from a tax perspective) | ||
| Receives documents via email | ||
| Has the ability to pay invoices | ||
| Has the ability to see invoices in the Statement of Account tool | ||
| Has the ability to see invoices within the Google Ads UI | ||
| Primarily liable party for payment obligation and suspension reinstatement | ||
| Initial party to be contacted by our collections team in the event of non-payment or suspension due to non-payment | ||
| No changes to current payments terms (time given to pay after invoice date) irrespective of who is primary or secondary |
Customers using manual payment setting
If the agency is currently listed as the primary financial party in the relevant Google Ads account, the account will need to be changed to reflect the advertiser as the primary financial party. Agencies and advertisers can make this change by contacting us.
When contacting us to make this change, please ensure that you are providing all the required information below:
- Google Ads Customer ID(s)
- Advertiser’s legal company name, according to registration documents
- Advertiser’s tax address, according to registration documents
- Advertiser’s Registro Federal de Contribuyentes (RFC) number
- Advertiser’s primary billing contact name
- Advertiser’s primary billing contact email (must be a company domain and linked to Google account***)
- Advertiser’s primary billing contact phone-number
***To link to a Google account follow the steps below:
- Visit this page: Create Your Google Account
- In the email/user field, select the 'Use my current email address instead' option and fill in your corporate email.
- Fill in the remaining data and click on 'next' until the process is finished.
- Your email may receive a message asking you to confirm the link (see if it did not go to the Spam folder). Confirm to finish the process.
Reporting Obligations: must provide reporting to advertisers with Ads campaign details
Advertisers with access to their Ads accounts can easily access their campaign information from their Google Ads user interface. However, advertisers that have opted for the setup mentioned above where an agency manages their campaigns and billing (as a secondary liable party) on their behalf may not have full visibility of their account activity.
Thus, to comply with the law, all Google Ads advertisers that set up their accounts with the advertiser as primary billing party and agency as secondary will receive a monthly report via email titled ‘Ads Campaign Report’.
This report, will be sent to the advertiser’s payment profile contacts every beginning of the month and will contain the previous month’s account activity details including for example:
- Campaigns date range
- Campaigns names and statuses
- Ad network type (for example, Search or Youtube) where the advertisements were displayed in the corresponding format.
- Campaign cost and cost per interaction
- Etc.
Please note the consolidated monthly Ads Campaign Report will include the above details for each month, irrespective of any changes to billed and invoiced parties.
