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Working with an agency

Account access levels

user access levels / account permissions / admin access

In short

Access levels decide what somebody can do inside your advertising account. Google Ads has five: Email-only, Billing, Read-only, Standard and Admin. Only Admin can give account access, change access levels and cancel invitations. Microsoft uses different names for a similar ladder, topped by Super Admin.

Access levels are the answer to a question most people only ask once something has gone wrong: who can actually do what in here. Google Ads names five of them, from least to most: Email-only, Billing, Read-only, Standard and Admin.

The one that matters is Admin, because it is the only level that can give account access, change access levels and cancel invitations from other users. Whoever holds Admin decides who else is in the room. Everything else is a question of what a person can change once they are in.

Microsoft arranges the same idea with different names. Super Admin has full permissions for all accounts. Standard User can manage campaigns and some billing but cannot add, edit or delete payment methods. Advertiser Campaign Manager can work on campaigns in selected accounts. Viewer has read-only permissions. The ladder is recognizably the same shape, so somebody comfortable with one will read the other correctly.

In practice

A business discovers during a handover that the only Admin on its Google Ads account is an email address at the agency it is leaving, and the owner is Read-only on an account holding years of history. Nothing was hidden. It was set up that way on day one and nobody looked again.

Why it matters to you

This is a five minute check that decides how a bad month ends. Somebody at your own business should hold Admin, on a company email address rather than a personal one, independently of any agency or contractor. That costs nothing while the relationship is working and it is the whole difference when it is not.

What to ask or check

  1. 01Who currently holds Admin on each of our advertising accounts?
  2. 02Is at least one Admin an address we control and would keep?
  3. 03When somebody leaves, who removes their access, and has that ever been done?

Who owns it

At least one Admin should be a company address your business controls, not a personal account and not an agency address.

Keep reading

Manager account

A manager account is the umbrella account an agency uses to run several advertising accounts from one login. Linking one to your account is normal. Giving it ownership is not the same thing: Google says a manager account can be given ownership of a client account, which lets it manage who has access.

Trademark

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design that identifies your goods or services and indicates where they come from. It is not ownership of the word itself. The USPTO is blunt about that: rights attach to how the word is used with your specific goods or services, not to the word in general.

Consumer Review Fairness Act

The Consumer Review Fairness Act voids contract terms that stop customers reviewing you. A provision of a standard-form contract is void from the start if it bars a review, penalizes one, or takes the reviewer's intellectual property. Removing abusive or irrelevant content is still allowed.

Typical results

Typical results is the standard a testimonial has to meet before it can be advertised. The FTC Endorsement Guides treat a specific result as a claim about what customers will generally achieve, and the Commission tested the usual disclaimers. Neither one reduced that impression, so a caveat does not fix an unrepresentative case study.

Hiring an SEO

Google publishes its own advice on hiring an SEO, and it is blunter than most agency marketing. No one can guarantee a number one ranking, a claimed special relationship with Google is a warning sign, and you remain responsible for what anyone you hire does to your site.

Account ownership

Account ownership decides who keeps the advertising account and its history when an agency relationship ends. Google lets anyone with administrative access unlink from a manager account at any time. Microsoft names the fix when the account was created in the wrong place, and lists what cannot be moved.

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