You want to change agencies, but the campaigns are still running. Someone controls billing, someone else has the creative files, and the last report does not explain which purchases were returned. A rushed handover can leave the new team changing an account before anyone has agreed what should stay.
Our recommendation is to separate the transfer of responsibility from the redesign of campaigns. First establish control, preserve the evidence and assign an operator. Then decide which advertising changes are justified. A new agency name on the report is not a reason to rebuild a working account.
Decide what the agency change must solve
Write the problem in terms that can be checked. Perhaps reports cannot be reconciled with store orders, creative tests have no recorded hypotheses, or nobody takes responsibility for qualified leads. “We need better results” is too broad to accept a handover against.
Distinguish a management problem from an offer or sales problem. Replacing the agency will not automatically improve stock availability, repair a difficult checkout or make unanswered enquiries turn into customers. Ask the incoming team what evidence would change its initial diagnosis. An agency that identifies a constraint outside advertising may be giving the more useful answer.
Agree what continuity means for the business: a named campaign operator, an approved spending limit, a reachable owner and an escalation route. These are handover conditions. They are not a guarantee that delivery or sales will remain constant.
Make an inventory before removing access
Record the actual owner, account identifier, responsible person and required access for each relevant asset. Do this with the company representative who can verify the settings, rather than infer ownership from the account name.
- Business portfolio, ad account, Facebook Page and Instagram account.
- Dataset or Pixel, event integrations, catalogues and connected shop assets.
- Analytics, tag management, domain and website administration.
- Billing contacts, creative source files, licences and reporting exports.
Mark missing or disputed ownership separately. Access, asset ownership and contractual rights to creative work are different questions. Do not promise that an asset can be transferred before checking the platform’s current rules and the agreement with the outgoing provider.
Meta’s business portfolio course covers accounts, permissions and security. Use the settings actually available to your company; an old screenshot is not proof of the current access model.
Preserve the explanation behind the numbers
An export with spend and ROAS is useful, but incomplete. Keep the selected reporting period, attribution settings, conversion definitions and campaign identifiers alongside it. Ask which offers, audiences and creative arguments were tested, what changed, and which conclusions remain uncertain.
Preserve both successful and unsuccessful tests. “This visual did not work” is not a transferable finding unless the audience, offer, spend and decision rule are recorded. The incoming team should know whether a test was stopped because of poor sales, a broken destination or missing data.
For an online store, reconcile reported purchases with confirmed orders and returns. For B2B, distinguish a form submission from an attended meeting and an opportunity accepted by sales. Keep open enquiries assigned during the transition. Changing advertising responsibility should not leave existing prospects without follow-up.
Give the new team access that matches its work
Use named access and an agreed permission level. Check that a company representative retains administrative control and recovery options. A shared personal password is a poor substitute for an access register: it makes individual responsibility harder to establish.
Analytics permissions also need a separate check. Google distinguishes Viewer, Analyst, Editor and Administrator roles. Granting report access does not automatically provide the authority to manage users or change the measurement setup.
Before access is removed, the new team should confirm that it can see the agreed assets and perform its assigned work. If a necessary system remains under an outgoing contractor’s control, record that dependency and arrange a specific resolution. Avoid compensating with a second tracking installation whose interactions nobody has checked.
Hand over operation before changing the experiment
Agree when the incoming team becomes responsible for budgets, campaign changes and incident response. During any overlap, assign one decision-maker for live changes. Two teams editing the same campaign make both operation and evaluation harder.
Start with a review of billing, destinations, active offers and measurement. Repair a confirmed fault according to the agreed scope. Keep optional restructuring as a separate decision with a reason, an owner and a way to assess it.
Rebuilding every campaign can erase a useful comparison even when the account history remains available. If campaigns, creatives, landing pages and conversion definitions all change together, a later movement in sales will be difficult to explain. A staged change is easier to evaluate, provided the original setup is suitable to continue.
Judge the new work against a recorded starting point
Choose a completed comparison period that fits the buying cycle. Save spend, confirmed outcomes, returns or lead acceptance, and any known measurement gaps. Record changes in promotions, stock, country mix and the sales process during the same period.
The review should answer what was delivered, what changed in the business outcome and what remains unproven. A cleaner report is an operational improvement; it does not establish additional revenue. A lower platform CPA may also reflect a changed conversion definition.
Agree the conditions for continuing, revising or stopping a test. These conditions should relate to the company’s economics and available observations, not a universal promise that a new agency will prove itself within a fixed number of days.
What to request in the handover document
- An asset and access register with unresolved dependencies and owners.
- A saved reporting baseline, conversion definitions and test history.
- The changeover time, spending authority and incident contact.
- A first work package with deliverables, acceptance criteria and a review date.
Canem Errant’s Meta Ads service covers agreed setup, testing and ongoing management. Bring the current scope, a sample report and the known access situation to the first discussion. Detailed investigation can then be scoped and priced; a full account audit is not automatically included in an introductory conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do we need a new ad account when changing agencies?
Do not make that the default. First verify ownership, access, account condition and the reason for replacement. Whether a different account is necessary depends on the actual restriction, not the change of supplier alone.
When should we remove the old agency’s access?
After the agreed responsibilities, access and outstanding dependencies have been checked. Security incidents may require a faster response; ordinary handover should have a documented owner and completion condition.
Can a new agency promise a better ROAS immediately?
It can propose a hypothesis and a bounded work plan. It cannot establish future sales from an introductory review. Ask what will be measured and which business conditions would make the plan unsuitable.
