Always Be the Owner of Your Ad Accounts

Always Maintain Control of Your Digital Assets

In today's world, maintaining exclusive ownership of your digital assets is fundamental to your company's success. As an entrepreneur, business owner, manager, or decision-maker, it is crucial that you have full control of your Meta Ads Business Manager, Google Ads Manager Account, TikTok Business Center, as well as ad accounts and various pages on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, plus tools like the Pixel.

The Importance of Controlling Your Digital Assets

Throughout my career as a digital trafficker, I have encountered numerous cases where clients did not have control of their own digital assets. This situation is especially surprising in large companies. Let me share a related experience in Meta Ads.

On one occasion, my services were requested to manage advertising campaigns for a large company in the city of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and I discovered that their ad account and Business Manager had been created and configured by a marketing agency that had previously collaborated with them. At first, when business relationships are new and expectations are high, this arrangement may seem ideal.

The agency takes care of everything needed to launch advertising campaigns, saving the client the need to get directly involved in creation and configuration, which seems to streamline processes. However, this initial convenience, where the agency assumes the creation and management of ad accounts for its clients, can often lead to significant complications in the long run.

Consequences of Not Having Control

• Loss of Control over your Data: The information generated through your advertising campaigns is invaluable. Without access to your previous campaigns, you lose the opportunity to learn from past mistakes and scale successes. This includes vital data such as Pixel information and the Facebook Conversions API.
• Agency Dependence: If you decide to change providers, you could face the risk that the previous agency does not want to transfer control of your digital assets. This could mean having to start from scratch, losing time and money.
• Legal and Compliance Risks: If the agency makes mistakes or acts inappropriately, your brand could face sanctions from advertising platforms. I have seen accounts suspended and have had to intervene to correct these errors, which can unexpectedly stop crucial campaigns.
• Ownership Recovery: If you need to recover control of your accounts and the agency does not want to collaborate with you, it can be an arduous process, even requiring legal interventions and extensive disputes with platforms like Meta.

How to Ensure Control of Your Assets

It is fundamental that companies insist on maintaining full control from the start, ensuring that any tool or account created in their name remains under their exclusive and direct ownership.

This practice not only protects their commercial interests but also guarantees that they maintain full control over the transparency and flexibility of their advertising strategies.

On Meta

Every advertising and marketing agency, consultant, or freelancer must have their own Business Manager. Through that Business Manager, the agency can connect to your company's Business Manager as a "Partner." To link them, go to business settings, then users, and finally Partners. By clicking on Partners to share assets, your Business Manager will be fully linked to the agency's Business Manager.

On Google

The process is very similar, though simpler. From your active Google Ads account, you can link another Google Ads account, which would be that of the agency you decide to work with. To link it, enter the agency's Google Ads account ID.

Conclusion

It is essential that you always maintain exclusive ownership of your advertising accounts and data. If you are a company with several employees, do not allow your employees to be the owners of the ad accounts either; you must always be the owner of your digital assets.

When I start working with a new client, I always ask who owns the ad accounts and what type of access they have to them. If I see that they are not the owners, we initiate an account recovery process. In cases where it is impossible to recover access, we create everything from scratch, regretting not being able to access those valuable data contained in the previous ad account.

Your agency or freelancer should manage your advertising campaigns without being the owners of the accounts.

This way, they will have access to the entire Meta advertising account, be able to make ads, generate reports, etc., but without being the owner of the account. The day you decide to stop working with that agency or freelancer, you will only have to remove their role. This is not only easy but avoids many misunderstandings.