If you’ve ever had to outsource your PPC ads to an agency or freelancer, then you’ve probably encountered the managerial access feature. This handy feature not only saves you creating a brand new Google Ads account, but it also allows experienced PPC experts to take control of your campaigns.
Although this feature can be incredibly useful and handy, it can also be incredibly dangerous.
In a world of increasing cybercrime and security threats, protecting your account and personal data has become more important than ever.
Let’s face it, nobody wants or expects a breach to happen, but if you start giving out managerial access to any random person, you’ll soon wish that you didn’t.
To make sure you understand the dangers of granting managerial access to external users and companies, we’re taking a look at exactly what damage someone can do with those privileges.
Even if you’ve never used managerial access before and have no idea what it is, you’ll still want to understand the risks.
Let’s get started by covering what the managerial access feature is in Google Ads and why its become so popular.
What Is Managerial Access In Google Ads?
If you’ve ever had problems with your Google Ads campaign, then you’ve probably looked for help from a third party company or user.
Since your Google Ads account contains lots of sensitive information such as billing information, the last thing you’ll want to do is hand over your username and password to someone else. But luckily, you don’t have to do this.
Thanks to the managerial access feature we’ve already mentioned, you can give other users access to your Google Ads account without having to share your password. Not only is this a lot more secure, but with the ability to add people via email address, it’s also a convenient feature.
By adding users to your account they’ll be able to see everything you see, but depending on their access, they’ll also be able to make major changes to your ads.
In some cases, this may be the primary reason why you gave a user managerial access, but in some cases, it can often be an unintended mistake.
To grant someone managerial access to your account, you’ll have to navigate to the tools menu at the top and select account access. Under there you’ll be able to see everyone who has access to your account and a blue button on the top left to add new people.
What Managerial Access Allows Users To Do
Granting someone managerial access to your Google Ads account can mean many things. Currently, there are various levels of managerial access that can be granted on a Google Ads account. The basic level of managerial access allows the user to browse your campaigns and account settings in “read-only” mode, while the top-level allows you to edit everything within the account.
Depending on your situation will determine which managerial access you’ll want to grant to other users.
To give you an idea of the different levels of managerial access and what they allow you to edit, here’s a helpful chart.
As you can see from above, the standard account access level allows external users to browse your campaigns and even edit them.
For some users, this is the primary reason for giving managerial access in the first place. However, if a user isn’t familiar with the different types of access, then it’s entirely possible for someone to grant standard access accidentally. This could lead to plenty of increased risks on their account without the user knowing before it’s way too late.
Although granting standard managerial access is relatively common in the PPC management industry, it’s still important to know the potential risks. Many users will often grant managerial access without hesitation, but many don’t understand the powers that they are giving.
Managerial Access Risks
Granting a user the wrong managerial access level can often result in disaster. Maybe you just want someone to check your account and give you feedback on your ads and campaigns. If you accidentally grant them standard managerial access, then they could start editing your ads without your permission.
This in itself can lead to even bigger problems.
If someone changes your ads to something against Google’s terms of service, then you could find yourself with a suspended account and no ads.
In the past when Google banned crypto ads, there was a number of reported instances where Google Ads accounts were compromised and had their ads changed, resulting in a permanent ban.
Although it wasn’t clear exactly how they got access to the accounts, the same threat still applies today. If someone changes your ads and they don’t meet Google’s guidelines, then you’ll receive an instant ban. And for those of you that don’t know, a lifetime Google ban is incredibly hard to lift no matter how many times you plead your innocence.
This would be a nightmare for any business that relies solely on Google’s PPC ads to bring in customers. The lesson here is to only grant managerial access to someone you can trust and won’t destroy your account.
In recent years there has been a huge increase in PPC management software ranging from bid optimizers to full account automation tools.
Some of these services will require you to give them managerial access in order to take control and automate your account. For many, this might seem normal and not a big deal, but by granting them managerial access they could technically do anything to your account.
Always make sure you only grant managerial access to legitimate people and know exactly what they’re going to do before they access your account.
Don’t Risk Compromising Your Account
Here at Lunio, we don’t require managerial access in order for you to connect to our platform. Instead, our system connects directly through the Google Ads API which allows us to only update your IP blacklist.
With API access we can only update your IP blacklist and nothing else. This means no surprise ad changes or the dreaded suspension email from Google.
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