Who should own your ad and analytics accounts

When an agency starts work it needs access to your accounts. It does not need to own them. The difference only shows when the relationship ends, and by then it is too late to negotiate.

The principle

An advertising account is a record of money you spent and what it bought. An analytics property is a record of who visited your website and what they did. Both are business assets. My view is that your business should hold ownership, and the agency should hold access that you can remove. This is a view, not a rule of any platform, but the platforms are built to make it easy to follow.

Google Ads

An agency may manage client accounts from its own manager account. Google’s help page on ownership says a manager can be the owner of a client account, that ownership brings full administrative access and data access privileges, and that a client account can have only one owner^[1]. If the agency is the owner, it controls who else has access. If you are the owner, you do.

What to ask: will the account be created under my business, with my billing, and with an admin user who is me? If the agency prefers to run campaigns inside its own account, ask what you receive when you leave.

Google Analytics

In Google Analytics, you need the Administrator role at account or property level to add or edit users, and the account-level Administrator role to delete them^[2]. Whoever holds that role at account level can manage who has access to your data. Make sure at least one person in your business holds it, and give the agency a role below it.

Meta

Meta distinguishes the owner of an asset, such as a Page or an ad account, from a partner that works on it. You can give a partner full control or partial access. With full control, the partner can manage everything but cannot share the asset with another business, because only the organisation that owns the asset can do that^[3]. You need full control of your own business portfolio to add a partner at all, so set the portfolio up under your business before the agency begins.

A checklist before you sign

1. The accounts are created in my business’s name, or transferred to it before work starts.
2. I am the owner or Administrator, and the agency is a user or partner whose access I can remove.
3. Billing runs through my business, or the contract states exactly how it is passed on.
4. The contract says what is handed over, in what form and by when, if I end it.
5. I have tested logging in myself and seeing the data.

The shortlist scorecard treats ownership of the ad and analytics accounts as a deal-breaker for exactly this reason. To see how I handle it, read how I describe my Google Ads management and ask me the same questions.

Contract terms differ by agency and by business. Treat this page as a list of questions, and take professional advice on the contract itself. The wider selection method is in how to choose a marketing agency in the UAE.