Who should own the Google Ads account, me or my agency?
Short answer
You should. The Google Ads account should be created for your business, under a login you control, and paid with your own card. The agency or consultant is given access to work in it, and you can remove that access the day you part ways. The history and the data then stay with you.
You should own the Google Ads account, and your agency should have access to it that you can remove. The account holds your payment details, your history and the record of which searches turned into jobs. That’s your business’s property in every practical sense, whoever does the daily work in it.
What ownership means in practice
The owner is whoever can add and remove people, and whoever pays Google.
| Item | Should sit with | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Administrator login | You | Only an administrator can grant and remove access |
| Payment method | You | Google bills you directly, so ad spend and management fees are visibly separate |
| Working access | The agency or consultant | Enough to manage campaigns, and removable |
| Tracking phone numbers | You, or held on terms that let you keep them | A number printed on a truck or a mailer shouldn’t vanish with a vendor |
| Landing pages | Your own website | Pages on someone else’s domain leave with them |
What you lose when the agency owns it
The history goes first, and the history is most of the value. An account that has run for a while contains the search terms people really used, the negative keywords built up to block wasted clicks, and the conversion record that automated bidding has learned from. If the agency owns the account and you leave, a new account starts with none of it.
You also lose sight of the money. When the agency pays Google and sends you one invoice, you can’t easily tell how much went to clicks and how much to fees. With your own card on the account, Google’s charges show up on your statement and the management fee is a separate line.
How an agency works in an account it doesn’t own
Google Ads is built for this. An account administrator can invite another person at a chosen level of access. Agencies also use a manager account, which links to client accounts so one login can work across many of them. Either kind of access can be removed by an administrator of your account, and removing it deletes nothing. The menu wording changes from time to time, so look in the account’s access settings and read who is listed.
This is how I handle Google Ads management: inside the client’s own account, with access the client granted and can withdraw. It fits having no long contracts. If I can be removed in a minute, the only thing keeping me there’s the result.
How to check who owns yours today
You can find out in a few minutes.
- Try to sign in to Google Ads with a Google login that belongs to you or your company. If you can’t sign in at all, you don’t control the account.
- If you can, look at the list of users and see whether you’re an administrator or something less.
- Check whose payment method is on file.
- Ask who holds the tracking phone numbers and where the landing pages are hosted.
If your agency owns it
Ask for administrator access in writing, calmly, before any talk of leaving. An agency may well grant it. Some agreements say the agency keeps the account. What yours says is a matter for the agreement itself and, if it’s disputed, for someone qualified to advise you. Whether an account can be handed over also depends on how it was set up and billed.
If the answer is no, ask for exports of the search terms, keywords, negative keywords and ad text, then open a new account in your own name. The same principle applies to your Local Services Ads (LSA) account and your Google Business Profile, and to who owns your website and accounts if you leave an agency. An agency that refuses access from the first day has shown you one of the warning signs early.