In this article, we'll take a look into the reasons why you may choose to add multiple client accounts to your Marin platform account. Generally speaking, having just a few larger Marin Client Accounts (MCAs) usually provides a better workflow for most platform users. However, the following scenarios may require setting up multiple MCAs for a single client.

For information on how to create a new Marin Client Account, please read our help center article. 

What Is A Marin Client Account?

Not sure exactly what an MCA is? No problem. In a nutshell, an MCA, or Marin Client Account, is essentially a "sub-account" within your main Marin platform account. At any time, you can click into the box in the upper-left corner of the platform to browse or search for a specific MCA within your account, either by name or using the designated Client ID (CID) number. From there, you can explore the data within that MCA, including any Publisher Client Accounts (PCAs) -- like Google and Microsoft accounts -- it may contain. 

Reasons To Have Multiple Client Accounts

Now that you know what an MCA is, the question becomes, why would you want multiple of them? Well, below we've listed the main reasons that you might choose to have multiple MCAs.

Large account? For best performance, an MCA should have the following maximums: 50,000 ad groups, 3 million keywords total, and 100,000 keywords with a click in the last 6 months. We recommend that you consider these quantities as they'll be in a year from now, rather than the current size.

Multiple business units or clients? Different business units may have various privacy rules to separate user access, which may therefore require a separate MCA.

Different client-level settings? If the client accounts you'd like to add to the platform have entirely different (and essentially incompatible) conversion types, URL formats, or other client-level settings, it's a good idea to add them as different MCAs. 

Mixed time zones? MCAs should be split so that the time zones of the included Publisher Client Accounts (PCAs) are close to, or east of, the time zones of the expected regular users. For example, if users are in Eastern Time but the PCAs are in Pacific Time, the latest data may not be displayed until 10am Eastern.

International clients? MCAs show metrics in a single currency and number format (although currency can be different from the PCA currencies linked to it). If you'd like to see certain PCAs in USD and others in GBP, you can add them as separate MCAs.