Giving external partners safe access to Google Ads

The rule: the external partner gets working rights, the keys stay in the house

Whoever works on your account needs rights to edit campaigns, feeds and reports. Whoever may add users, change roles and unlink accounts holds the keys instead. You keep these two things apart. This applies equally to an agency and a freelancer, and it is no declaration of mistrust: as an external specialist myself, I also consider this split right, because in the end it spares both sides a dispute.

Who owns what, and what you clarify before giving notice, is covered in who owns the Google Ads account. This article is about the implementation: who gets which role, by which route, and how you withdraw it again.

Which role does the external partner get in Google Ads?

Google Ads has five access levels: Email-only, Billing, Read-only, Standard and Admin. Standard is enough for ongoing work, because it allows editing campaigns. According to Google, only admins may grant account access, change access levels, add or remove product links, and accept or unlink manager account links.

The most common objection: the external partner wants Admin because otherwise they cannot link Merchant Center or GA4. That is true, but it is one-off work. I would set up the link together in a short appointment, by an internal admin, instead of granting admin rights permanently for it.

Manager account or invitation: what makes the difference

Agencies and freelancers usually work with a manager account (MCC), because they bundle many accounts in it. For you as a retailer, the route matters less than the question of whether the manager account becomes owner of your account.

After an accepted link, the admins of the manager account can, according to Google, manage your campaigns. If the manager account has ownership access, they may additionally remove users from your account, revoke admin rights and unlink other manager accounts. In effect that is more than an admin login. If a manager account links an existing account, ownership by default does not lie with it. If the manager account creates the account itself, it automatically becomes owner. Google itself advises granting ownership only if it is really needed.

A simple decision rule follows:

• New account: create it yourself, with your admins and your payment profile. Only then does the external partner link their manager account. That way, no ownership arises through the back door.
• Existing account: linking via the manager account is fine, you decline ownership.
• Individual freelancer without a manager account: an invitation as Standard to their business address.

Both routes can be ended cleanly. The invitation is more transparent, because the person appears directly in your user list. With a manager account you see only the manager account, not which agency employees behind it have access.

Who in the house has to be admin

Two internal admins are the minimum. Google points out that an account with only one admin can lose access to its tags if that person becomes unavailable. With more than three admins, multi-party approval applies, according to Google: a second admin has to confirm adding or removing users or changing roles. The request expires after 20 days, and Google support cannot approve it. If the external partner is one of these admins, they co-decide on their own removal. As of November 2026.

The admins do not run on an employee's private Gmail address. I advise one admin on a role address such as ads@ with a person firmly responsible for it, and the second a personal company account from management. If someone leaves the company, the role address remains.

Merchant Center and GA4 belong in the same round

Google Ads access alone is rarely enough for an external partner. For Shopping they need Merchant Center, for evaluation GA4. Both have their own roles, and both are easily forgotten when you separate.

In Merchant Center, Standard may edit feeds, products and account settings, but cannot manage people or link Google Ads accounts. For reports there is the separate Performance and insights role, so Admin is not needed for that. In GA4, the Editor has full control over the property settings, and only the Administrator may manage users. More on the role of Merchant Center in the Shopping setup is in the guide to Google Shopping and Merchant Center.

A trap in Merchant Center: if the website verification is tied to the person you remove, the account loses, according to Google, its verification and its claim on the domain. Someone else then has to carry out both again, and until then your Shopping delivery is up in the air. If the external partner set up the verification, transfer it to an internal admin early.

The departure test on day one

My suggestion: when you start, check whether you could remove the external partner tomorrow without revenue or measurement suffering. Whatever fails the test is a risk on the day of separation, however well the collaboration is going at the moment.

1. Two internal admins on company addresses in Google Ads, Merchant Center and GA4.
2. The external partner has Standard or Editor, or a manager account without ownership.
3. The conversion tag belongs to your account, not to the manager account. If measurement ran through the manager account's cross-account tag, it no longer records new click conversions after unlinking. A tag of your own keeps measuring. What the foundation looks like is described in Conversion tracking for an online shop.
4. Remarketing lists are in your own account. Lists based on the manager account's tag are no longer populated after unlinking, shared lists drop away, and ad groups that target them stop running, according to Google. Whether you need your own remarketing campaigns at all is clarified in this article.
5. Billing runs through your own payment profile. If the manager account is the paying manager of a monthly invoice, delivery stops after unlinking until billing has been changed.
6. The website verification in Merchant Center is tied to an internal person.

How to withdraw access when the collaboration ends

The order matters, because individual steps depend on each other. According to Google, the link to a manager account can only be unlinked if at least one user retains access to the account. Campaign history is not lost in the process.

1. Beforehand: repeat the departure test. Change billing, transfer the website verification, check tag and lists.
2. Google Ads: first unlink the manager account, then remove external users. According to Google, admins of a linked manager account can also approve requests.
3. Merchant Center and GA4: remove external people. In Merchant Center, according to Google, an admin can only remove themselves if another admin is linked.
4. Evidence: file a dated screenshot of the user lists of all three tools, plus the external partner's confirmation that no access remains. Whether you need it, you only find out when someone later asks who made a change.
5. Afterwards: watch conversions and delivery for one to two weeks. If something drops away, a dependency was overlooked.

How to organise the handover to a new specialist without a performance dip is covered in Switching agency without a performance dip.

When to deviate from the rule

Admin for the external partner can make sense if nobody in the house can or wants to take over the admin tasks and the external partner de facto also maintains users and links. The minimum still stays the same: two internal admins are there in addition, and the external admin goes on the departure list with a date. I would not grant ownership to an outside manager account in this case either. For a very small shop where one person decides everything, one internal admin is acceptable if need be. That is the weaker variant, because according to Google the account can lose access to its tags if that person drops out.

Legally, assigning roles does not settle ownership and claims. What the contract should say about access, data and handover is something you clarify with your legal adviser. The technical split only ensures that on the day of separation you do not depend on it.