Insight · Working with agenciesBOFU
Switching agencies without losing your data
The short answer
Changing agencies should never mean starting from zero. Ad account history, conversion data, audiences and creative are business assets. If they sit in accounts you own, a switch is a matter of changing who has access. If they sit in the agency's accounts, you risk losing years of learning — so check ownership before anything else.
Before you give notice
- Confirm you own the Google Ads account — your organisation is the owner, not the agency's manager account
- Confirm you own the Meta ad account, Business Portfolio, pixel or dataset and catalogue
- Confirm you own GA4, Google Tag Manager, Search Console and Merchant Center
- Confirm you own LinkedIn, YouTube, Amazon and marketplace advertising accounts
- Check who pays the platforms — ideally your company's card or invoice
- Read the contract's notice period and handover clauses
If any of these are owned by the agency, ask for ownership transfer or admin access before the relationship becomes awkward.
What to collect
- Access — admin access to every account above
- Creative — source files for ads, videos and landing pages, plus usage rights for creator content
- Audiences — customer lists, lookalike seeds and exclusion lists
- Tracking documentation — conversion events, Conversions API or server-side tagging setup, UTM conventions
- Reports — historical performance by month, channel and campaign
- Learnings — test logs: what was tried and what worked
- Third-party tools — call tracking, feeds, landing page builders, CRM integrations
Keep accounts, don't rebuild
Starting a new Google Ads or Meta ad account throws away history that helps the platforms optimise and gives you a clean but empty slate. Unless the old account has policy problems, keep it, restructure inside it, and let the new agency work from the same data.
The transition month
- Grant the new agency access while the old one still has it.
- Run a joint handover call to walk through campaigns, tracking and in-flight tests.
- Freeze big changes for a week or two — no account rebuilds while access is changing.
- Audit tracking to confirm conversions still fire correctly after the switch.
- Remove the old agency's access on the agreed date, and rotate any shared passwords.
- Agree a baseline for judging the new agency, using the last few months.
Protect your data
Personal data — customer lists, lead exports, CRM access — should move only between accounts you control, and the old agency should confirm deletion of copies they no longer need. India's DPDP framework makes this a compliance issue as well as good practice; see the DPDP Rules for marketers.
Mistakes to avoid
- Giving notice before confirming ownership
- Letting the new agency create fresh accounts and lose history
- Removing the old agency's access before the handover
- Forgetting tag manager, Search Console and Merchant Center
- No baseline to judge the new agency against
Access checklist by platform
- Google Ads — your organisation as owner; the new agency linked through its manager account with standard access
- Meta — ad account, pixel or dataset, catalogue and Pages owned by your Business Portfolio; partners added rather than accounts moved
- GA4 and Tag Manager — administrator access for your team; the agency as editor
- Search Console and Merchant Center — owner access in your name
- LinkedIn, YouTube, Amazon and marketplaces — your company page and ad accounts, with the agency as a partner or user
- Domain, DNS and hosting — always in your name, with access granted only when needed
A handover document template
Ask the outgoing agency for a short document covering: active campaigns and their purpose, budgets and bidding strategies, conversion events and how each is tracked, audiences and exclusions, current tests and their status, creative in use and planned, known issues, and logins to third-party tools. It takes a day to write and saves the new team weeks.
Keeping performance steady during the switch
Change one thing at a time. Keep winning campaigns and ads running while the new agency audits; restructure in stages; and agree that any large change in the first two weeks is reviewed by both sides. Most performance dips after a switch come from rebuilding everything at once rather than from the new agency's strategy.
Frequently asked questions
What if the old agency owns our ad account?
Ask for ownership transfer or admin access promptly and politely; most agencies cooperate. If they don't, the platforms have processes for proving ownership, but it takes time — and the lesson is to keep future accounts in your name.
Will performance drop when we switch?
There can be a short dip while campaigns are restructured. Keeping the same accounts and freezing big changes during the handover reduces it.
Do we own the creative the agency made?
Check the contract. Many agreements transfer ownership of paid-for creative; creator content may have separate usage rights.
How long does a handover take?
Usually two to four weeks, including a short overlap between agencies.
Can a new agency start before the old contract ends?
Often yes, for audit and planning with read-only access, then full access on the handover date. Our marketing audit is designed for exactly this stage.
Should we tell the old agency before hiring the new one?
Check your contract's notice terms first. Many businesses run a quiet audit with the new agency, then give notice once ownership and access are confirmed.
What if the old agency refuses to hand over files?
Refer to the contract's ownership and handover clauses. For future engagements, keep creative files in shared drives you own.
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