Who owns your Google Ads account? What to demand from an agency (including us)

One of the hardest phone calls we get starts like this: "We have parted ways with our old agency and we can no longer get into Google Ads". Sometimes the account exists, but the business was never an admin on it. Sometimes Google’s invoices were addressed to the agency, which passed them on at a different figure. Sometimes the account is fine, but Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Merchant Center were set up under the supplier’s login. None of these cases is rare, and none of them is inevitable.

We are writing this as an agency, and that is exactly why we want to be clear: what follows is what every business should demand from whoever runs its campaigns. Including us.

What owning an account actually means

There is no "owner" field to fill in on a Google Ads account. Control rests on three things, and it is worth checking each one:

1. Admin access. Anyone with Admin access can add and remove users, change access levels and manage billing. If nobody in your business has it, the account is not really yours.
2. The payments profile. This is the entity that pays Google: company name, address, tax details, payment method. Google’s billing documents are issued in that name.
3. The link with a manager account. Agencies work through a manager account (formerly MCC). A manager account can simply be linked to yours or it can be its owner, and the difference matters.

Google Ads access levels

According to Google’s documentation, there are five access levels for an account:

Users with Admin or Billing access can update the payments profile, including the name, address and tax ID. That is another reason the Billing level should sit with your finance team, not only with the agency.

Manager accounts (MCC): linked or owner?

This is where most misunderstandings live. According to Google’s guide to client account ownership:

• a client account can have only one owning manager account;
• if an agency creates a new account from its manager account, it automatically becomes the owner;
• if an agency links an existing account, it does not get ownership by default: the client account has to enable it;
• ownership is transitive: if the agency’s manager is the owner, so are all the managers above it.

Admins on an owning manager can invite users with admin access, remove users, accept or decline link requests from other managers, unlink other managers, and transfer or switch off ownership. Google points out that ownership does not take admin rights away from the client account’s own admins — which is why a direct admin of your own is the real safeguard.

Ownership in itself is not a problem: it makes day-to-day management easier. The problem arises when the business does not know who holds it and has no direct access at all. Ask your agency, in writing, whether its manager account owns your account, and check the access and security settings to see which users and managers are linked.

Who pays Google, and in whose name

There are two models, and both are legitimate:

• The business pays Google directly, through a payments profile in its own name. The agency invoices its fee separately. Google’s documents come to you, with your tax details, and media cost can be read without an intermediary.
• The agency pays Google and re-invoices the business, often through monthly invoicing and a paying manager: Google lets a manager account gather many client accounts on a single consolidated invoice, provided they are linked to that manager and share a currency.

The second model is not suspicious in itself, but it has two consequences worth knowing. First, Google’s invoice is in the agency’s name, so you only ever see the agency’s invoice to you — and checking the real cost (and the VAT treatment on it) depends on the account’s own reports. Second, the payments profile cannot be transferred. When you change agency you use "Change who pays" in the billing settings, which may require advertiser verification to be completed again; any promotional credit is not carried over and a positive balance is refunded.

Cost transparency: what Google’s policy says

Google has a specific policy for third parties that manage advertisers’ accounts. Its transparency requirements include:

• when sharing cost data, agencies must report the exact amount charged by Google, exclusive of their own fees;
• if they charge a separate management fee, they must disclose it clearly: at a minimum in writing before the first purchase and on every customer invoice;
• where the terms require it, they must provide a monthly report with costs, clicks and impressions at account level;
• they must make reasonable efforts to provide other relevant information when asked, including by letting customers sign in to the account to see cost and performance directly.

In plain terms: an undisclosed mark-up on media cost is exactly what the policy is there to prevent. There is nothing wrong with paying an agency, even paying it well; there is something wrong with not knowing how much is going to Google and how much to the agency. The check is simple: the cost in the account for a given period should match the "media" line on the invoice you receive. If you want to work out how much it makes sense to spend in the first place, the reasoning is in our budget guide.

Security: what changed in 2026

Over recent months Google has introduced several measures against account takeovers, and they directly affect how access is granted and removed:

• Multi-party approval. Adding a user, removing one or changing their role needs approval from a second admin. The request goes to eligible admins across the hierarchy, including those on owning managers, and expires after 20 days if nobody approves it. Read-only roles and API users are exempt.
• Passkeys for sensitive actions. From 15 July 2026 Google may ask for a passkey to complete actions such as changes to user access or to account links. A newly created passkey can take a day or two before it works in Google Ads — not something you want to discover on handover day.
• Company email addresses. Google is piloting, with a subset of advertisers, a block on sensitive actions for people signed in with free addresses such as @gmail.com: they can still view reports and edit campaigns, but not manage users and links.
• 2-Step Verification for the API. Since 21 April 2026, anyone authorising new tools connected through the API (reporting, third-party software) needs 2-Step Verification switched on for their Google Account.

The practical consequence of multi-party approval is subtle: if the business has a single admin and all the others sit at the agency, every user change you make will need the agency’s approval. That is why we recommend at least two internal admins, both on company email, with 2-Step Verification and passkeys already set up.

Not just Google Ads: the linked assets

A Google Ads account without its linked tools is worth little: conversions come from the tag, audiences from Analytics, products from Merchant Center. Each has its own access system, and each should belong to the business.

A few details worth knowing. In Google Analytics 4, a property created in the agency’s account can be moved to another account: according to Google, the tag ID, settings, data streams, reporting data and integrations move with it, while change history stays in the source account, and you need the right role on both accounts. In Merchant Center, standard access cannot link Google Ads accounts. On a Business Profile, only the primary owner can transfer primary ownership, and new owners have to wait seven days before they can remove other users. The same principle applies to the Tag Manager container and, if you use one, to the tagging server: the infrastructure should sit in a project that belongs to the business.

What happens when the agency leaves

The good news: according to Google, when a manager account is unlinked the client account does not lose its own history or access to Google Ads features. Campaigns, historical data and settings stay where they are. Three things can break, though:

1. Billing, as described above, if the paying manager was the agency’s.
2. Cross-account conversion tracking. If conversions were defined in the agency’s manager account, after unlinking they keep being recorded only for clicks that happened before, within the conversion window. Conversion actions have to be recreated in the client account before the split, or bid strategies are left without a signal.
3. Shared remarketing lists. Lists that depend on the manager’s shared tag or library stop populating, and ad groups targeting them stop serving.

The genuinely hard case is a different one: campaigns run in an account held by the agency, on its payments profile, where the business has never been an admin. The history then sits in an account you do not control. You can ask to be added as an admin and to change who pays, but if the agency will not cooperate, the alternative is starting again in a new account. It is a contractual matter: settle it before you start, not at the end.

Red flags

• "The account is ours, we will send you the reports." If you cannot get in, at least read-only, you cannot check anything.
• No internal admin, or a single login tied to a former employee’s personal email.
• Invoices with a single "Google advertising" line, with no split between media cost and management fee.
• Analytics, Tag Manager or Merchant Center created under the agency’s login and never shared.
• "Proprietary" campaigns you are not allowed to see. Scripts, templates and the agency’s internal tools may legitimately remain its own; the campaigns, keywords and data in your account do not.
• Reluctance to give you direct access, justified by "security" or the risk that you might "break something". Read-only access breaks nothing.

The handover checklist

Whether you are starting with a new agency or leaving an old one, these are the points to check, in order:

1. At least two internal admins on the Google Ads account, on company email, with 2-Step Verification and passkeys already set up.
2. Manager account ownership clarified: you know which manager is the owner and you have it in writing.
3. Payments profile in the business’s name or, if the agency pays, a written agreement on how to change who pays and a monthly comparison of account cost against the invoice.
4. New billing live before unlinking the old paying manager.
5. Conversion actions and remarketing lists in the client account, not only in the agency’s manager.
6. GA4, Tag Manager, Merchant Center, YouTube channel and Business Profile owned by the business, with the agency as a user.
7. Export reports and change history before the split, so you have a historical reference outside the account.
8. Remove access that is no longer needed, remembering that multi-party approval needs a second admin to complete it.
9. A full audit as soon as you take control: our audit checklist follows the order in which it is worth doing.

If you want to know the state of your account’s access, billing and links before deciding anything, our free audit starts right here. You can see how we work in our process, which services we offer, and the answers to the most common questions in the FAQ.