2 Reasons You Need to Be the Ad Account Owner

Let’s say you wanted to start running ads on Google. You hired an agency and gave them the reins. You asked them to start sending ads to your business, your products and your landing pages, but you didn’t sign up to be the ad account owner.

If you don’t own your Google ads accounts, then who does? It’s the marketing agency you hired. 

The agency holds the keys to your account. But the problems really start when they won’t turn them over to you. You may have decided to let them go and get a different agency. Well, that’s easier said than done!

With the current agency you hired, you let them do everything because, frankly, you don’t know how and you don’t want to learn how, because you don’t have the time. So that’s why most people just hand everything over to someone else. They don’t see the importance of being the ad account owner.

Maybe you get some reports a couple times a week or month, but they don’t have any insights on how your ad campaigns are performing or growing or if they need improving. Not only that, you have no idea what everything on the report means!

You don’t even know if the leads you did get were from paid or organic leads! You basically just leave it alone and keep doing the work you love to do. 

The problem lies in not being the ad account owner. You may not have realized it at first, but when you want to change things, it could be impossible to get your account back. 

Here are some reasons why it’s so important to be the ad account owner.

So Really, Why Do You Need to Be The Ad Account Owner?

You’re Paying For It

If you’re paying for your Google ads account, you should own it. This is how you’re making money. You’re the one paying for your ads created in Google which lead people to your website. It’s your account and you should have ownership of it.

What if the agency you hired just quit on you without even telling you. This seriously does happen to lots of people. But your ads are still running without anyone looking after them.

You are paying for your ads with a credit C=card, but because it’s not your name on the account, you can’t stop those payments from coming out. If you can’t ever find that agency, because nobody is answering your calls, then guess who continues to pay? You! Because you can’t tell the account to stop taking money out, and you can’t cancel any ads or pause them, Google will continue to take your money. They don’t really know what’s going on, so they just keep on sending the ads and getting paid. 

It’s A Part Of Your Brand

If your account is part of your brand, then you need ownership. Anything that is your brand, you need to own. 

If the agency you hired quits and doesn’t even let you know, it’s impossible to gain ownership. All ads platforms like Google, won’t help you fix this problem. They leave it all to you.

That’s why it’s so much easier to create your ad account with you as the owner first, then you can hire an agency to manage your account.

How The Setup Process Should Go

If you want to start a Google Adwords campaign and then find an agency to manage your campaigns, start off by following this process. It’s just this simple!

As the client, here’s what you do:

• Go to the Adwords sign-in page
• Sign in with your existing email
• Set up a password if you don’t already have one.
• Add the agency you hired as a Manager of the account.

Then the agency accepts the invitation and sets up the campaigns for you.

When you set up the account yourself, this ensures that you are the legal owner of the account. You have control of shutting it down whenever you want. You can stop anyone else from having access whenever you want. If you want to change agencies then you’re free to do so, and you won’t lose any of the work that’s already been done. 

What If The Agency Won’t Let Go of Your Accounts?

If you didn’t start your account with your name, then the agency who did start your account, put it in their name and used their email address. This means that legally it’s their account. And they don’t have to give you access or give it all back to you if they don’t feel inclined to do so. 

Sometimes the agency who works for you could decide to take a few months off without even letting you know. Then you’re stuck.

Or in other cases you may want to let go of a certain agency and find another one. They legally own the account and don’t have to give it to you.

What do you do?

You’ve contacted Google, but they don’t get involved in third party disputes. 

So the best thing you can do is go over your contract with them first. And find a way to peaceably end your relationship with that agency.

The Best Case Scenario

Once you start talking to the agency you hired and let them know that you want to have full access to your account, hopefully they will agree and give you access as an administrator.

If they do that, then you can remove their access. Now you can invite a new agency to manage your account using their MCC account.

That’s the best way things could go.

Another way things could go is when you tell the original agency you want access to your account in order to hire a different agency, they could be a little upset because they’re going to lose you as a client. 

So they decide not to give you access to the account, but they will agree to export your account. This is better than nothing. You can now start your own account and import your old settings, campaigns, and ads. 

In this case, you will lose your account history, but you won’t have to start all your campaigns all over again from scratch.

The Worst-Case Scenario

What’s the worst that could happen?

The agency won’t give you anything.

What you can do is get a lawyer to help out in this situation. You might want to do that if you’ve had an agency run ads for you for several years. There’s a lot of data in your account if it’s a well-seasoned account. And it would be nice not to lose it all! 

So hiring a lawyer might be an option. It could cost you a pretty penny so you have to decide if it’s worth it or not. Sometimes the old agency will want to charge you a huge release fee. This will force you to pay it or start from scratch. Ouch!