How to Give Access to a Google Ads Account
Here is a little guide on sharing your Google Ads account access with me (or anyone else, if you’d like). I tend to ask for access quite a lot, so I’ve come up with a simple guide to show the whole procedure.
There are three methods to share your Google Ads account:
- adding a manager;
- adding a user;
- sending your Google Account credentials.
Option #1: Adding a manager
This option is my best choice, since I use the MCC account (agency account for managing multiple clients’ campaigns). The whole access sharing workflow is very simple — all you need to do is:
- give your account ID (the 10-digit number that can be found in the upper right corner of the Google Ads interface, next to your email and profile image),
- approve the request once it is has been sent.
You will get the request to share your Google Ads account over the email with the approval link. Alternatively, you can go to Tools & Settings → Setup → Access and security in Google Ads to approve the request. There are three tabs on the Access and security page and you’d need to click the Managers tab. Right there you can see any pending requests as well as remove managers you don’t want to share access with anymore.
Keep in mind that there is no way to specify the access level for managers. If you would like to share read-only access, consider adding a user.
Option #2: Adding a user
Unlike adding a manager, inviting a user is a completely manual procedure. In your Google Ads account go to Tools & Settings → Setup → Access and security. You will see three tabs, the one you need is called Users. Simply press the plus button, enter a new user email, and select account access level. As I mentioned in the previous section, you can specify read-only access which might be safe for a brief external PPC audit.
Option #3: Share your credentials (please, don’t do that)
Sharing login and a password for your Google account is neither safe nor convenient. The main problem is that 2-step verification is a must nowadays and it’s a huge pain for both you and the person you are sharing the account with to complete the verification procedure. And of course, sharing your credentials imply that another person will have full access to your Google Account, including Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube and other Google services.