Switching is routine and usually goes fine. It goes badly in exactly one situation: when the campaigns were never in an account you own.
Before you give notice
- Confirm ownership. Open Google Ads and check the account is yours, with the agency as a manager — not the other way round.
- Check billing. Your card should be paying Google directly. If the agency pays and invoices you, you have never seen the real media cost, and the account may be inside their MCC.
- Secure the assets. Merchant Center, GA4, conversion actions, audiences, creative files. Make sure they sit in accounts you control.
- Export the history. Change history and performance reports, before access changes.
Never run two agencies in one account
Two people making changes in the same account produce results nobody can attribute and a learning phase that never settles. It also makes both of them defensible when it goes wrong.
We will not touch an account someone else is still working. Start the conversation now, wrap up properly with them, and day one begins the day you are clear.
What a clean handover looks like
- Manager access revoked once the new team is in, not before.
- Nothing deleted. Campaign history is an asset — pausing is fine, deleting is not.
- A written note of what was running and why, even a short one.
- Final invoice for work already performed, and that is the end of it.
Expect a dip
Any significant restructure triggers a learning period — usually two to four weeks. An honest incoming agency will tell you this before starting, not after the first bad week. If your new agency promises an immediate lift, they are either not restructuring anything or not being straight.
Conversion history is the most valuable thing in the account, and the easiest to throw away to look busy.