Account ownership
who owns the ad account / leaving an agency / taking our account with us / transferring an ad account
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.
Google's position is reassuring and conditional. Users with administrative access to a client account can terminate the relationship with the manager account at any time by unlinking. Nobody needs the agency's cooperation. The condition is in the first four words, because that right belongs to whoever holds administrative access, and it is possible for that not to be you.
The same page explains why. A manager account can be given ownership of a client account, which lets it manage user access for that account. Google also notes the limit on that power: a manager account cannot change proprietary information such as the account's sign-in details. So ownership here is about who controls access, not about who holds the keys to everything.
Microsoft addresses the situation that creates most of the trouble, and names it plainly among its use cases: a client wants to leave their agency and move their account elsewhere. It also names the setup that causes it, calling it a sub-optimal arrangement where the client account was created within the agency account, and says what should have happened instead. Ideally the client would create their own individual shell and link it to the agency account.
When it has been done the awkward way, Microsoft can move the account between manager accounts with no data loss and no down time, usually within 20 minutes and sometimes up to 24 hours. It carries across the account fundamentals and all existing campaign data. But not everything qualifies. Accounts with lodging campaigns, shopping campaigns, search campaigns with shopping settings enabled, or flyer extensions with an associated store cannot be transferred at all.
In practice
The question to settle at the start of a relationship, not the end, is whose account this is. If you created it and invited the agency in, leaving is an unlinking you perform yourself. If they created it inside their own structure, leaving is a request, and on one platform certain campaign types make it impossible.
Not the same as
- Access levels
- Those decide what a user can do inside an account. This decides whose account it is.
- A manager account
- That is the umbrella structure. Ownership is about which side of the relationship holds the account under it.
Why it matters to you
Everything in that account is history you paid for: the conversion data the bidding learned from, the search terms, the years of performance that make the next campaign cheaper. It is also the part nobody discusses while things are going well. Both platforms have made leaving possible, and one of them tells you outright which setup makes it awkward. That is an easy conversation before signing and an expensive one afterwards.
What to ask or check
- 01Who created this account, and is it inside the agency's structure or our own?
- 02Do we hold administrative access today, which is what the right to unlink depends on?
- 03If we ever move platforms or agencies, does anything in here fall into a category that cannot be transferred?
What people get wrong
That the account is automatically yours because you paid for the advertising. The right to unlink belongs to whoever holds administrative access, and a manager account can be given ownership of a client account, which is what decides who manages that access.
Red flags
- An account created by the agency inside its own structure, which Microsoft calls a sub-optimal setup.
- Nobody on your side holding administrative access to your own account.
- A campaign type in the account that cannot be transferred, discovered at the point of leaving.
Who owns it
Whoever holds administrative access, which is a fact about the account settings rather than about who pays the invoice. It can be checked today in a couple of minutes.
Where you will see it
In the admin or access section of the ad platform, and in whatever the contract does or does not say about it.