Who owns your ad account and marketing assets when an agency runs them?

Ownership and access are two different things

The most useful idea to hold onto when an agency runs your marketing is that owning an account and having access to it are not the same thing. Owning an ad account, a pixel, an analytics property or a business page means it sits under a business identity you control, and you decide who else can touch it. Access means someone has been granted permission to work inside an account that still belongs to somebody else. A healthy arrangement is simple to describe: you own the accounts, and you grant your agency the access it needs to do the work.

The reason this matters shows up the day the relationship changes. If the accounts are yours, ending an engagement is mostly a matter of removing someone's access, and your campaign history, audiences and data stay exactly where they are. If the agency owns them, you can find yourself starting again with a new account and no history. It costs nothing to set this up correctly at the start, and it's awkward to unpick later, so it's worth a short conversation before any work begins.

The accounts worth listing before you start

Before you talk about tactics, it helps to have a plain list of the accounts a marketing engagement usually touches, so nothing important is quietly created under someone else's login. Not every business uses all of these, but most use several. For each one, the question is the same: which business identity owns it, and who has access?

That last line matters. Your website, domain and hosting deserve their own careful handover, and this guide stays focused on the advertising and analytics accounts, where ownership is easy to overlook because the agency often sets everything up for you.

• Your Meta business portfolio and ad account, which hold your Facebook and Instagram advertising.
• Your Meta dataset or pixel, the record of website and lead events used for measurement and audiences.
• Your Facebook Page and the connected Instagram account.
• Your Google Ads account for search and display advertising, and any manager account it's linked to.
• Your Google Analytics property, where your website traffic and conversions are recorded.
• Your Google Business Profile, the listing that appears in Google Maps and local search.
• Your domain name, website and hosting, which have their own separate handover.

Keep readingHand over your website, domain and hosting too

How access works on Meta

On Meta, your Facebook and Instagram assets live inside a business portfolio, the account many people still call Business Manager. If that portfolio is yours, you own the Page, the ad account and the pixel inside it, and you invite your agency in as a partner. Meta's own help centre describes the mechanism plainly: a business with full control of its portfolio shares specific assets, such as a Page or an ad account, with a partner by entering that partner's business portfolio ID, then choosing how much access to grant.

You can give a partner full control of an asset or partial access limited to particular tasks, like creating content or managing ads. Meta also notes that only the organisation that owns an asset can share it with another business, and that you can change a partner's access or remove them entirely whenever you choose. The practical takeaway is to create your own business portfolio and ad account first, then add the agency as a partner. If an agency instead runs your ads from an ad account inside its own portfolio, that account is theirs, and you are the guest.

How access works on Google

Google splits into a few separate products, each with its own access model, so it's worth checking them one at a time. In Google Ads you can grant people one of several access levels, from Admin down through Standard, Read only, Billing and Email only. Only an Admin can add users, change access levels and manage account settings, so make sure someone in your business holds Admin rather than leaving the agency as the only administrator. Agencies often link your account to their manager account, which is normal, and you can unlink it later.

Google Analytics works in a similar way: its roles run from Administrator, which can manage users and settings, down through Editor, Marketer, Analyst and Viewer. Keep an Administrator role on your own property so you're never locked out of your own data. Google Business Profile is different again. A profile can have several owners and managers but only one primary owner, and only owners can add or remove people. Ownership can be transferred, though a newly added person waits seven days before they can become the primary owner. Aim to be the primary owner of your own listing.

Set it up cleanly before the work starts

The easiest time to get this right is at the beginning, before anyone is mid-campaign. A short setup routine avoids most problems: create or confirm your own Meta business portfolio, Google Ads account, Analytics property and Business Profile under a login that a permanent member of your team controls, keep billing details in your own name where you can, then invite the agency with the access it actually needs rather than handing over ownership. Writing a plain line into your agreement that names who owns each account and what access the agency holds turns a vague understanding into something you can both point to.

As a labelled example, picture a plumbing business, Riverton Plumbing, starting with an agency. Before the first ad goes live, the owner creates the Meta business portfolio and ad account, keeps the company card on the ad account, and adds the agency as a partner with permission to manage ads but not to control the Page. The agency links the existing Google Ads account to its manager account with the owner still set as Admin. None of this slows the launch, and it means the owner never has to ask permission to see their own numbers. Riverton Plumbing is invented here to show the shape, not a real client.

Keep readingAgree responsibilities before you choose an agency

Keep readingSet up access safely before Meta ads training

Keep control when things change

Relationships end, staff move on and agencies get swapped, so it's worth knowing the exit before you need it. If you set things up as above, leaving is tidy: in Meta you remove the partner from your portfolio, in Google Ads and Analytics you remove the user or unlink the manager account, and in Business Profile you remove the manager, transferring primary ownership first if it ever sat elsewhere. Because the accounts are yours, your ad history, saved audiences, pixel and dataset events and analytics all stay put, ready for the next person to pick up.

If you discover partway through that a key account is owned by the agency rather than you, there's no need to panic, but do raise it. Ask whether the asset can be moved into your own portfolio or account, or whether a fresh one under your control should be created with the history preserved where possible. It's a reasonable request, and a straightforward agency will help. The point isn't distrust; it's making sure the marketing you pay for keeps building something that belongs to your business.