Who should own the Google Ads account your agency runs for you

A question I think every business should ask a PPC agency early is a plain one: whose account will my ads run in? The answer decides what you keep if the relationship ends, and it is much easier to settle before any work has started than after.

What Google says about ownership

Google Ads lets an agency work through a manager account. According to Google's help page on ownership, a manager can be the owner of a client account, and ownership brings full administrative access and data access privileges. A client account can have only one owner. Google also says a manager should be made owner only if it needs those privileges, and that users of the client account cannot transfer or turn off ownership: they can only unlink the manager.

Read that last point twice. If the agency is the owner, your own options inside the account are narrower than most buyers expect. If you are the owner, you decide who has access.

How the link works

The process Google describes starts with the agency. Its manager account sends a link request using your customer ID, and an administrator of your account accepts it. The page on linking accounts to a manager account says the invitation can be accepted from the access and security settings or from the email. That means you can be the owner and still give the agency everything it needs to do the work.

What I would ask

I would ask four things, in writing, before signing:

1. Will the account be created in my business's name, or will you link to the account I already have?
2. Why would the agency need to be the owner rather than a linked manager?
3. If I end the contract, what do I receive, and by when?
4. Who in my business holds administrator access, and can I remove yours at any time?

These are my own questions, not Google's rules. Google's pages tell you how the platform behaves. They do not tell you what a contract should say, so take professional advice on the contract itself.

Where this fits in the comparison

Account ownership is one of the deal-breakers in the PPC proposal scorecard, because it is hard to put right later. The full method for comparing agencies is in how to choose a PPC agency in Dubai, and the first-week checklist is in what to have in place before a PPC agency starts.

A word about me

This site is published by Web Marketing International FZCO, which manages Google Ads for businesses and sells that service. If I am one of the agencies you are comparing, ask me the same four questions. You can read how I describe the work on the Google Ads management page of my own site, and then score me on the same card as everyone else.