The AdWords Account Set Up by Someone Who Left

Ads nobody can change

The ads have been running for years. They were set up by a marketing coordinator who has since left, or by an agency whose contract ended last summer.

The card statement shows the AdWords charges every month. But when the owner wants to change the ads for the spring, nobody in the office can log in.

Sometimes the only login was the former employee's work email, deleted when they left. Sometimes it was the agency's own. Either way, the business is paying for an account it cannot open.

How an AdWords account is owned

An AdWords account has no password of its own. People reach it through their own Google accounts, which are given access to it at different levels.

Billing runs through a payments profile, which carries a business name, an address and a payment method, and has its own list of people who can manage it.

Agencies usually reach client accounts through a manager account, a single dashboard linking many client accounts to the agency's staff.

So ownership, in practice, comes down to three things: who has administrative access, whose payments profile pays, and which manager accounts are linked.

Five things to find out

• Who has administrative access, by name and email address.
• Whose payments profile the account bills through.
• Which manager accounts are linked, and whose they are.
• Which addresses receive billing and policy notices.
• What else is linked, such as Analytics or your Google listing.

The first decides everything else. Only an administrator can add or remove people, so if every administrator has left, the business has to prove to Google that the account is its own, and that takes time.

Access levels in plain terms

AdWords has four levels of access. Administrative access can do everything, including managing who else has access. Standard access can change campaigns but not users.

Read-only access can see but not change, and email-only access simply receives reports and notifications.

The business should hold administrative access through at least two of its own people, using business email addresses that do not disappear when somebody leaves.

An employee or agency running the campaigns day to day usually needs standard access, not the keys to the building.

And each person should have a login of their own. With one shared login, nobody can tell who changed what, and the account's change history stops being useful.

When an agency opened it

Agencies work in one of two ways, and it matters which.

In the first, the account is in the business's name and paid through the business's own payments profile, and the agency manages it through its manager account.

When the relationship ends, the link is removed and everything stays with the business.

In the second, the agency runs the ads from an account it owns and bills the business for the spend. The account, and its history, belong to the agency.

Some agencies will hand over an account they opened, and some will not. Ask which model yours uses, and get the answer in writing.

Why the history is worth keeping

Starting again in a new account sounds simple, but a good deal is lost.

The conversion tracking tags on your website belong to the old account, so every one has to be replaced. Remarketing lists built from years of visitors start again from nothing.

So does the record of which keywords, searches and ads produced enquiries, which is the most valuable thing an account contains. Recovering the existing account is usually worth the effort.

A worked example

A family-owned RV dealer on the edge of town had run AdWords since 2014. The account was opened by its marketing coordinator, using her work email address.

She left last spring, and her email account was deleted, as the dealer's own policy required. Nobody realised that address was the account's only administrator.

The ads kept running on the company card. Earlier this month, when the owner wanted to change them ahead of the spring RV shows, there was no way in.

Recovery went through Google's support process, with the dealer proving ownership through its billing records. It took a little over two weeks.

The account now has two administrators from the business, both on company addresses with two-step verification, and the agency hired since has standard access through its manager account.

When somebody leaves

The day an employee who touched the account leaves, open the access page and remove them. If they used a shared login, change its password.

When an agency relationship ends, make sure the business holds administrative access before the manager account link is removed, not after.

Check the linked accounts too. If the Analytics property, or the Google listing behind your location extensions, belonged to the same person, those need a new owner as well.

And check where notices go. Billing warnings and policy emails sent to an address nobody reads are how a declined card quietly stops the ads.

Billing in the business's name

The payments profile should carry the business's legal name and a business card, not an employee's personal card claimed back on expenses.

If automatic payments fail, AdWords stops showing the ads until the payment problem is resolved, so the card's expiry date matters here just as it does for the domain.

Keep a note of every service each card pays for, and update them all when the card is replaced.

The counter-case

Some businesses have nothing to rescue.

If the business already holds administrative access, pays through its own payments profile and simply gives its agency access, the arrangement is sound and only needs a second administrator.

An agency running ads from its own account can suit a business that wants a fully managed service, provided the trade-off is understood and written into the contract.

And an old account that spent little and recorded nothing useful may be quicker to replace, with a new one set up properly in the business's name.

For everyone else: own the account, own the billing, and add a second administrator.

This week

1. Log in with your own Google account.
2. List every user and their access level.
3. Add a second administrator from the business.
4. Check whose payments profile pays the bills.
5. Review linked manager accounts, removing old ones.
6. Turn on two-step verification for every administrator.
7. Write down who has access and why.

Step three is the one that prevents the whole problem. An account with two administrators from the business survives any one person leaving, whoever they are.

The same single point of failure, in a different account, is covered in the domain renewal on an old credit card.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.