Administering an existing Google Ads account

Summary

When you link an existing Google Ads account to a manager account, the Google Ads account and its history don't change. The original advertisers don't lose access to billing or sign-in.

You can also link another manager account to your manager account, which lets you manage and view data for all of the Google Ads accounts under that manager account.

A manager account can only have one manager account directly above it.

An individual Google Ads account can be linked to no more than five manager accounts, and your manager account structure can be no more than six levels deep.

Manual steps

  1. Find the Google Ads customer ID for the account you want to manage in the top right corner of the Google Ads account.
  2. Sign in to your manager account on the Google Ads UI.
  3. Click the Accounts tab.
  4. Click the Performance tab.
  5. Click the + plus button.
  6. Click + Link existing account.
  7. Once you've reviewed the terms, enter the Google Ads Customer ID. To link multiple accounts at once, enter one Customer ID per line.
  8. Click SEND REQUEST. The Google Ads account receives an account notification and email that invite them to link to your manager account.

A pending notification appears in your manager account's Pending link requests. Once the invited account accepts your invitation, you receive an email confirmation and the accounts are linked. See Link accounts for more information.

Any user with administrative access on the invited account or on a linked manager account can accept your invitation with the following steps:

  1. Click the gear icon.
  2. Choose Account settings from the drop-down menu.
  3. Select Account access from the side navigation, then click Accept invitation.

Manager accounts can be assigned the following levels of access:

  • Administrative
  • Standard
  • Read only
  • Email only

See About access levels to learn more.

Automatic steps

Linking accounts must be initiated by the manager account and accepted by the individual account. The state of the link is stored in the status field of the CustomerClientLink or CustomerManagerLink.

See the list of valid statuses. Use PENDING to initiate the link, and ACTIVE to accept the link.

Linking two pre-existing Google Ads accounts can be accomplished through these steps:

  1. While authenticating as the manager account, extend an invitation to the client account by creating a CustomerClientLink with status PENDING.
  2. While authenticating as the manager account, query the GoogleAdsService to find the manager_link_id of the CustomerClientLink you created.
  3. While authenticating as the client account, accept the invitation from the manager account by mutating the CustomerManagerLink to have status ACTIVE.

If you don't have access to the sub-account, use one of the following options based on your implementation:

Web flows
Use the OAuth web app authentication model to set up OAuth2 authentication for your software on behalf of the sub-account. For instructions on how to set up multiple-user authentication, follow the instructions in the client library.
Other apps
You may want to implement a waiting system that checks for pending invitations periodically.

For code samples on how to manage Google Ads accounts with the Google Ads API (including advanced, sub- and test accounts), see Account Management.

See Linking to manager accounts for more details.