Paid Media
What You Should Own Before Hiring a PPC Agency
Account ownership decides what you keep when an engagement ends. Sort it out before the first campaign launches, not after.
The uncomfortable moment in a lot of agency relationships is not the performance conversation. It is the offboarding conversation, when a business discovers the campaign history, conversion data and audience lists were never actually theirs.
The accounts that should be in your name
Ownership here means the business is the account owner and can grant or revoke access to anyone, including the agency.
- Google Ads account
- Meta Business Manager, ad account and pixel/dataset
- Google Analytics 4 property
- Google Tag Manager container
- Google Search Console property
- Google Business Profile
- The domain registrar and DNS
- The CRM and marketing automation platform
Why it matters more than it sounds
Ad platforms learn from history. Conversion data, audience signals and campaign performance accumulate inside the account. Rebuilding in a fresh account does not just cost setup time — it discards the learning period you already paid for.
The same is true of analytics. A GA4 property you do not control cannot be exported retroactively in any complete way. When it disappears, so does your ability to compare this year to last.
Questions worth asking before signing
None of these are hostile questions. A partner working transparently will have quick answers.
- Will campaigns run inside our accounts or yours?
- If we part ways, what do we keep, and in what format?
- Who has admin access, and how is it revoked?
- Is anything built on a proprietary platform we cannot take with us?
- How is media spend billed — direct to the platform or through you?
The reasonable exception
Sometimes a shared or agency-held asset is genuinely the practical option, usually because of a platform limitation. That is fine when it is stated openly and documented. The problem is not shared infrastructure — it is undisclosed shared infrastructure.