# Switching Paid Ads Agencies Without Losing Account History > How to leave a paid ads agency without losing your Google or Meta ad accounts, conversion data or performance history, and what to secure before notice. Source: https://snowballcreations.com/switching-paid-ads-agencies-without-losing-account-history/ Author: Max Sinclair Published: 2026-10-19 Updated: 2026-10-19 --- **Key takeaways** - Get your own Admin login on every ad account before you tell the agency you are leaving. On Google Ads, only an Admin can unlink a manager account. - Check who owns each account. A Google Ads account created by an agency's manager account is owned by that manager, and a Meta ad account created inside the agency's business portfolio stays there for good. - Export the history and check the tracking while the relationship is still friendly. - Freeze a baseline before the new agency touches anything, and never let anyone more than double the spend in the first month. You keep your account history by making sure it was yours in the first place. The campaigns, the conversion data and the audiences all live inside the ad accounts, so if your company holds Admin access to those accounts, changing agency is a change of who logs in and nothing is lost. The trouble starts when the agency created the accounts inside its own setup, or when nobody at your end has a login at all. Sort that out before you serve notice rather than after, and the switch becomes a fairly dull piece of admin. Dull is exactly what you want. If you are still deciding whether you want an agency at all, [our honest take on using a paid ads agency](/should-i-use-a-paid-ads-agency/) comes first. This piece assumes you have decided, and you want out of the current one cleanly. ## Get admin access before you serve notice The first job is a login with the top access level, in your company's name, on every ad account the agency runs. Do it before the notice email, while everyone is still being nice to each other. Asking for access on day one of a notice period means asking a supplier you have just let go for a favour. On Google Ads that level is called Admin, and it matters more than it sounds. [Google's page on access levels](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9978556) (read 19 October 2026) lists unlinking manager accounts, accepting or rejecting manager link requests and giving other people access as things only an Admin can do. Standard access lets you edit campaigns, but it does not let you remove the old agency or bring in the next one. A Standard login is a login that can watch. The same check applies on Meta, LinkedIn and Microsoft: a named person at your company, on a company email address, with the highest access the platform offers. Not a shared inbox the agency set up, and not the personal Gmail of a marketing manager who left two years ago. Google Analytics and your tag manager container belong on the same list, because that is usually where the conversion tracking lives. If you are not sure who at the agency actually holds the keys, [who really runs your account at an agency](/who-actually-runs-your-paid-ads-account/) is worth ten minutes first. ![Two software co-founders talk through switching paid ads agencies at a table by a sash window](/images/blog/switching-paid-ads-agencies-without-losing-account-history-body-1-hero-02.jpg) ## Find out who owns the ad accounts Access and ownership are different things, and the difference decides how messy the switch will be. A login means you can see and edit. Ownership decides whether the account stays with your business when the agency goes. Google and Meta handle this very differently, so check each platform on its own. ### Google Ads: you can always unlink Google's help page on [ownership of client accounts](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7456532) (read 19 October 2026) says a client account can have only one owner, and that when a manager account creates a new account, that manager automatically becomes its owner. If the agency linked an account you had already made, it does not get ownership unless someone on your side switched it on. The good news is on the same page. The client account still owns its data and can remove an owner's access by unlinking. Users of the client account cannot transfer ownership, but they can always unlink a manager that owns it, and then turn ownership on for a different manager if they want to. Unlinking needs Admin access on your side, which is why the login comes first. ### Meta: an ad account lives in one portfolio Meta is stricter. Its help page on [adding an ad account to a business portfolio](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/910137316041095) (read 19 October 2026) says an ad account can only be in one business portfolio, and that an ad account created in a portfolio is permanently part of it and cannot be deleted or transferred. If your agency created the ad account inside its own portfolio, that account is not coming home. What Meta offers instead is sharing. Someone with full control of the agency's portfolio assigns yours as a partner, the account stays where it is, and you get access to it. That keeps the history visible, but the agency still holds the asset. In most accounts we have inherited like this, the cleaner answer is a new ad account in your own portfolio, with the old one shared to you for reference. When the account already sits in your portfolio, the agency simply requests access and the account stays yours. ![Diagram of who owns Google Ads and Meta ad accounts when switching paid ads agencies](/images/blog/switching-paid-ads-agencies-without-losing-account-history-ownership.svg "On Google the client can always unlink; on Meta an account created in the agency's portfolio stays there.") ## Pull the history out while it is friendly Export everything you might want to compare against later, and do it before notice. Even if the account itself is safely yours, an agency on its way out may tidy up, and a tidy-up can delete exactly the thing you wanted to keep. Their reporting dashboard may not outlive the contract either. Keep it all in a folder your company owns, not in a tool the agency hosts. The list we ask new clients for is short: - Monthly spend, clicks, conversions and conversion value by campaign, for as far back as the account goes - The search terms report, so the negative keywords are not rebuilt from scratch - Every conversion action, with its counting and attribution settings written down - Audience lists and their sizes, plus your Merchant Centre feed rules if you sell products - The change history, which shows who changed what, and when ## Check the tracking before anyone touches it Conversion tracking is the part of a switch most likely to break quietly. Before the handover, someone on your side should know which conversion actions exist, which ones the bidding optimises towards, and where each one fires from. If nobody can answer those three questions, the new agency inherits a black box and the bidding carries on learning from whatever is in it. The usual problems we find are a purchase counted twice because two conversion actions are both set as primary, a demo form that fires when the page loads rather than when the form is sent, and offline conversions that stopped uploading months ago because the CRM connection ran through the agency's own connector. For a SaaS or B2B account that last one hurts most, because it is what tells Google which leads became qualified demos and paying users. Our rule is that tracking, including offline conversions back to the CRM, is in place before a pound is spent. On a switch, that means it is verified before the old agency's access is removed. Our [Google Ads tracking tips](/google-ads-tracking-tips/) cover the setup itself. ![A homeware warehouse worker checks wrapped table lamps on wooden shelves beside an open roller door](/images/blog/switching-paid-ads-agencies-without-losing-account-history-body-2-hero-02.jpg) ## Freeze a baseline the new agency will be judged against Before the new agency changes anything, write down what the account does today. That means spend, cost per acquisition or return on ad spend, conversion volume and impression share, per platform, for the last three months and for the same three months a year earlier. That record is what the next agency is measured against, and nobody can quietly rewrite it later. It matters because every new agency's first report is tempted to compare itself with the worst month of the old regime. Seasonality makes it worse: a homeware brand's fourth quarter set beside its third makes anyone look clever. For SaaS, split brand from non-brand before you freeze anything, because brand conversions are never growth, and a new agency can look very good by leaning on people who were already searching for your name. If you are not yet sure you want to leave, [an independent audit before you renew](/paid-ads-audit-before-renewing-your-agency/) covers similar ground with the decision still open. ![A photographer shoots an oak armchair and a linen floor lamp against a paper backdrop in a small studio](/images/blog/switching-paid-ads-agencies-without-losing-account-history-body-3-hero-02.jpg) ## What the first month with a new agency should look like Quieter than you might expect. A good incoming agency spends the first weeks reading the account, repairing tracking and tidying structure, not rebuilding everything from nothing. A full rebuild throws away the learning the platforms already have on your existing campaigns, which is the very history you went to all this trouble to keep. Our own rule is never to more than double an account's spend inside a single month, however good the first week looks. We scale on impression share and volume, not on a lucky few days. So if you are spending £8,000 a month on Google when you switch, the most we would put behind it in month one is £16,000, and usually a good deal less. An agency that wants to triple the budget in week two is selling you its confidence, and paying for it with your money. After that, the work is what it always was: the weekly, monthly and quarterly lever checks, run through [our two-stage process of finding the fit and scaling the spend](/saas-paid-ads-agency/). New ideas get tested across targeting, messaging and creative, and what already works gets about 80% of the spend, with 20% kept for new tests. The setup is a fraction of the job, and the weekly management is where the money is made. ## Read the exit clause before the proposal Before you sign with anyone new, read how you would leave them. The best time to agree an exit is before you need one. Check the minimum term, the notice period, and who owns the ad accounts, the tracking and the creative at the end, in writing. Whoever you hire, ask for the accounts to sit in your business's name with the agency given access, rather than the other way round. For what it is worth, ours is a three-month commitment, then one month's rolling notice, with fees from £1,749 per platform per month and a minimum ad spend of £2,500 a month per platform ([what a PPC agency costs in the UK](/ppc-agency-cost-uk/) shows how those add up). If the switch is really a question about whether an agency is the right model at all, [agency, freelancer or in-house](/ppc-agency-vs-freelancer-vs-in-house/) weighs that up, and our [red flags when hiring a Google Ads agency](/red-flags-when-hiring-a-google-ads-agency/) are worth a read before the next signature. ## The dull switch is the good switch On Monday morning, list every ad account the agency touches and check two things for each: does someone at your company have Admin access, and who owns it. Then export the history, check the tracking and freeze the baseline. Only then send the notice email. Done in that order, the old agency's last month is an inconvenience rather than a hostage situation, and the new one starts with a full account and an honest number to beat. ![Timeline of switching paid ads agencies, from Admin logins before notice to the baseline review in month three](/images/blog/switching-paid-ads-agencies-without-losing-account-history-switch-order.svg "Three of the seven steps happen before the old agency knows you are leaving.") We take on accounts from other agencies for SaaS and B2B companies and for [homeware and furniture brands](/homeware-paid-ads-agency/). If you would like a second pair of eyes before you serve notice, [ask us for a free account audit](/get-in-touch/) and we will tell you what you own, what you do not, and what to fix first. ## Frequently asked questions ### Will my old agency's reports show what Google actually charged? They should. Google's transparency requirements for third parties, read on 19 October 2026, say cost data shared with customers must be the exact amount Google charged, excluding the agency's own fees, and that a separate management fee must be disclosed in writing before the first purchase and on every invoice. Check their reports against the billing section of your own account. ### What if the agency will not tell me my Google Ads customer ID? Ask in writing. Google requires agencies to give customers the customer IDs for their Google Ads accounts when requested, so the advertiser can contact Google directly about the agency. If they still refuse, Google's third-party policy page links to a form for reporting a third-party partner. ### Should we close the old Meta ad account once the new one is live? There is little to gain. Meta's Business Help Centre, read on 19 October 2026, says closing an ad account does not delete it from the business portfolio, and a closed account still counts towards that portfolio's ad account limit. If it sits in the agency's portfolio, having it shared with yours keeps the history readable instead. ### How many admins should our Google Ads account have? At least two on your side. Google's access-levels page, read on 19 October 2026, warns that an account with only one administrator may lose access to its tags if that person becomes unavailable, and shows a Tag Diagnostics notification when it spots a single-admin account. Two named people on company email addresses is the minimum we would want. ### We need a fresh Meta ad account. How many can a new business portfolio create? One, to begin with. Meta's Business Help Centre, read on 19 October 2026, says a new business portfolio can only create one ad account, rising to three once a campaign delivers and a payment is made. Treat that first account as the long-term one and set it up in your own company's name.