Two men rang me this summer, eight weeks apart, both running successful surfacing and driveway companies. Neither knew the other was calling. They told me almost exactly the same story.
Both had been paying a marketing agency for years. Both had been getting leads, at least some of the time. And both had just found out, the hard way, that the advertising account they had spent tens of thousands of pounds building was not actually theirs.
When they left, the data stayed behind.
Not the money. The data. Which sounds like the smaller loss until you understand what it does.
What “your ad account” actually means
Here is the bit nobody explains when you sign.
There is a right way to do this, and it is not complicated. You have your own Google Ads account, created on your own Google login, with your own card on the billing. Your agency links it to their manager account so they can work on it. They get the keys to the van. You still own the van.
That is not what happened to Mark or Declan.
In their case there was no linking. The agency simply created a brand new Google Ads account using its own Google login. The same login it uses for its other clients. Hundreds of them, all sitting behind the same door.
Read that again, because it is the whole problem in one line.
If every client is behind the same door, the agency cannot hand you the key. Handing you the key would show you every other client’s account, their budgets and their results. So they never do.
Which means you do not get full control of your own advertising. Not because anyone is being awkward on the day, but because the way the thing was built makes it impossible.
You might get a login that shows you your own numbers. You might get a monthly report. What you will not get is ownership. And on the day you leave there is nothing to hand over, because the account was never yours to move.
Access is not ownership. A window is not a door.
What it looks like when it goes wrong
Mark runs a resin driveway and groundworks company. Two installing teams, voted best in his area two years running, around 50 Google reviews and not a bad one among them. A proper business.
He came to me in August having spent £500 a week on Google Ads and booked one appointment that week.
That on its own is a bad month. What was underneath it was worse.
His ad account was owned by the agency, not by him. In June the account was hacked, and every bit of historical performance data went with it. Years of it. Because the account was not his, he had no independent copy and no say in how it was recovered. He was told to start from scratch.
He also discovered that his landing page had been changed without anyone telling him, and was pointed at a county 90 miles from his yard. Mark works within a 15 mile radius. That is a lot of paid clicks from people who were never going to buy a driveway from him.
And through all of it, no reporting. No monthly call. No explanation. He was spending £2,000 a month and could not tell you what he was getting for it.
He was not doing anything stupid. He was doing what most trade owners do, which is hand it to a specialist and get on with the job.
And it was not a one-off
Declan runs a surfacing company. Tarmac and resin. He came to me first, and it was Declan who told Mark to give me a ring.
Same agency. Same setup. Same missing history when he left.
We rebuilt his Google Ads from nothing in July. No historical conversion data, no learning, no head start. A blank account and a proper structure.
Six weeks later, this landed on my phone.
Hi Kelly quick update on the Google ads, we absolutely over the moon with this and we’ve converted pretty much every job we’ve had ring though lately the leads are unreal and we’ve getting more than we have in the last 6 months but we all knew that was gunna happen
Declan, NE Resurfacing Ltd
I am not putting that up to show off. I am putting it up because an account built from zero, set up honestly and structured properly, is now doing more for Declan than years of accumulated history ever did sitting in somebody else’s cupboard.
The history was never the valuable bit. The setup was.
Why the data matters at all
Fair question. You sell driveways, not databases.
Here is the short version.
Google and Meta both bid on your behalf using machine learning. The system watches who enquires, who does not, what time they clicked, what device they were on, what they searched. Over months it gets better at spending your money on the people likely to buy.
That learning lives in the account. Not in the campaign, not in the ad copy, not in your head. The account.
Lose the account, lose the learning. You go back to the start of the queue and pay the tuition fees all over again while it works you out for a second time.
You also lose your baseline. Without last year’s numbers you cannot tell whether this year is good. That makes you very easy to keep in the dark.
Five minutes, and you will know where you stand
Do this today. It costs nothing.
1. Try to log in on your own. Go to ads.google.com and sign in with your own business email address. Not a link your agency sent you, not a login they set up for you. If nothing is there, or the only way in is through their login, you can stop reading. You have your answer.
2. Find the account number. Top right of the screen, ten digits. Write it down. That number is yours whatever happens next.
3. Check who the manager is. In Google Ads, go to Admin, then Account access. It will list any manager accounts linked to yours, and it will show which email addresses have admin. Your agency’s manager account sitting there is completely normal and is exactly what good looks like. Your own email address not being on the admin list is not.
4. Check the billing. Under Billing, look at who the payments profile belongs to. If your card pays Google directly, that is a very good sign. If you pay your agency and they pay Google, ask why.
5. Do the same on Meta. Business Settings, then Accounts, then Ad Accounts. Look at which Business Manager owns it. If it is theirs, your pixel and your audiences are theirs too.
The four questions to ask before you sign or renew
Print these. Ask them out loud. Watch how quickly they answer.
1. Do I own the ad account, or do you?
The right answer is a straight one. Any wriggling here tells you everything.
2. If I leave in six months, what do I take with me?
It should be the account, the data, the conversion tracking, the pixel and the audiences. All of it.
3. Who is the billing on?
Your business paying Google direct is the cleanest arrangement there is.
4. Can I see the account right now, on this call?
Not a report. Not a dashboard. The actual account.
An agency doing it properly will find these questions boring. That is what you want. Boring is good.
If the answer comes back wrong
Do not panic and do not burn the bridge on day one.
Ask, politely and in writing, for your own email address to be made an admin on the account, and for the account to be moved under a manager account or Business Manager that you own. It can be done. It takes minutes.
Whether they will do it is another matter, and their answer tells you everything you need to know.
If it is no, you now know exactly what you are dealing with, and you can plan your exit properly instead of being ambushed by it. Get screenshots of your key numbers before you go. Export what you can. Anything you save is a head start.
And if you have already lost it, you are not stuck. Both Mark and Declan lost their history. Declan’s rebuilt account is now beating the one he spent years filling.
How I do it?
Every client I take on gets their own Google Ads account, created on their own Google login, with their own Meta Business Manager and their own card on the billing. From day one. Their name on the door.
I link it to my manager account so I can do the work. That is the only access I need, and it is the only access I ask for.
If you ever want to leave me, you take the lot. The account, the data, the tracking, the audiences. I will help you move it. That is not generosity; it is just how it should work, and being clear about it from the start keeps me honest.
You get the leads, a clear monthly report and a short call. That is your involvement.
Because you should be quoting jobs, not sitting at the kitchen table at nine at night wondering where your money went.
Been paying an agency and cannot answer the four questions above?
Send me the name of your business and I will take a look at your setup and tell you straight what I find. No charge, no pitch, and if your current setup is fine I will tell you that too.