How to Run Facebook Ads for Clients (Without Losing Access)

To run Facebook ads for clients properly, the client's own Business Manager should own the ad account, Page, pixel and domain, and your agency Business Manager should be added as a partner with the access it needs. The client owns the assets, you hold the keys, and either side can walk away without destroying anything. That structure is the whole job, and getting it wrong is the single most expensive mistake in agency media buying.

I've seen the alternative twice: an agency runs everything from its own ad account, the relationship ends, and the client loses years of pixel data, ad history and social proof on their ads in one afternoon. Nobody wins that argument afterward.

What does the correct setup look like?

1. 1
   Client creates their Business Managerbusiness.facebook.com, in the client's name, with a client staff member as admin. If they already have one, use it.
2. 2
   Client owns the assetsAd account, Facebook Page, Instagram account, pixel/dataset, and the verified domain all live inside the client's Business Manager.
3. 3
   Client adds your agency as a PartnerSettings → Partners → Add Partner, using your agency Business ID. They assign per-asset access.
4. 4
   You assign your own staffInside your Business Manager, give each team member the least access they need to the client's assets.
5. 5
   Everything runs in the client's accountCampaigns, billing and reporting all sit in the client's ad account. You operate it; they own it.

Two details make this work in practice.

Partner access by Business ID beats personal invites. Adding individual people by email creates a mess: staff leave, personal accounts get restricted, and the client ends up with a list of strangers. Partner access is one connection between two organisations, and revoking it removes everyone at once.

Ask for the access you need, not everything. Most agency work needs advertiser or admin access on the ad account, plus content or advertiser access on the Page, plus access to the pixel. You rarely need full admin of the client's Business Manager, and asking for it is a common reason clients stall.

Who should own the pixel and the domain?

The client, in both cases, and this is worth being firm about.

The pixel (now the dataset in Events Manager) accumulates the conversion history Meta optimises against. It is the most valuable asset in the account and it cannot be transferred cleanly between businesses. If it lives in your Business Manager, the client's optimisation history is hostage to your relationship.

Domain verification must be done by whoever owns the domain, and it controls who can edit link previews and which business gets attributed conversions from that domain. It belongs with the client. Verification is a DNS TXT record, a meta tag, or a file upload; DNS is the most durable.

While you're in there, set up the Conversions API alongside the browser pixel. Browser-only tracking loses a meaningful share of events to blockers and browser restrictions, and server-side events fill much of that gap. Most ecommerce platforms have a native integration now, so this is usually a settings toggle rather than an engineering project.

What should you agree before the first pound is spent?

Get these in writing, because every one of them causes an argument later:

• Who pays Meta. The cleanest arrangement is the client's card on the client's ad account, so ad spend never touches your books and you aren't financing them. If you must pass spend through, price it explicitly and expect the cash-flow drag.
• What the fee is based on. Percentage of spend, flat retainer, or performance. Percentage of spend quietly incentivises you to spend more, and sophisticated clients know it; be ready to explain why the incentive is aligned anyway, or don't use it.
• What success is. Agree the metric before you start. Platform-reported ROAS and the client's actual blended return are different numbers and the gap causes most agency-client conflict; blended versus platform ROAS explains why they diverge.
• What the testing budget is. New accounts need a learning period where results are bad by design. If the client hasn't agreed to fund it, month one becomes a crisis.
• Who writes and shoots the creative. Creative is the biggest performance lever on Meta. If the client is supplying it and their supply is slow, say now that this caps results.
• Exit terms. Access is revoked, campaigns are handed over paused rather than deleted, and you provide a final report. Writing this down early makes clients more willing to give access, not less.

How do you set up the account itself?

Keep the structure boring. Complexity in campaign structure is where budget leaks.

• Naming convention first, applied by everyone. Something like Objective | Audience | Creative-Concept | Date. Reporting is impossible without it and no tool fixes it retroactively.
• Few campaigns, few ad sets. Meta's delivery works better with consolidated budgets, and overlapping ad sets suppress each other's delivery.
• UTM parameters on every ad, consistent across the account, so the client's own analytics can attribute independently of Meta.
• Aggregated Event Measurement configured with the client's priority events in order.
• Custom columns saved for the metrics you actually report on, so every screenshot from the account matches the report you send.

What do you do in the first two weeks?

Before launching anything, audit what's already there. Existing accounts almost always contain something useful and something broken: an old audience worth reactivating, a pixel firing twice, a campaign that quietly ran for a year at a loss.

Then research the category, because a new account's first creative is a guess unless you ground it. Every active ad on Facebook and Instagram is public in the Meta Ad Library, so you can read every competitor's live ads and, from each ad's start date, tell which have survived long enough to be profitable. For a new client this is the fastest possible route to a defensible creative brief: pull the ads that have been running for 90 days across the five closest competitors, and the winning angles in that market are sitting in front of you.

The library has no download button and no memory, which is a problem when you need those ads in a deck next week. Our free extension, Klipio's Meta Ad Library Downloader, adds a download button to every ad and, in bulk mode, packs a competitor's whole library into one ZIP with a searchable swipe board and a CSV (disclosure: Klipio is our product; free, no account, runs in your browser). The full method is in downloading Facebook Ad Library videos, and presenting a competitor ad audit to a client covers turning it into the pitch.

What should client reporting look like?

Monthly reporting that clients actually read has three layers and fits on two pages.

The business layer, first. Spend, revenue attributed, blended return across all channels, and cost per acquisition against target. Clients care about this and nothing else on the first read. How to measure Facebook ad performance covers which numbers belong here.

The diagnosis layer. What changed and why: which creative concepts won, where cost moved, what you tested, what you learned. This is where you demonstrate the work.

The plan layer. The next three things you're doing and what you need from them. Every report should end with a request, because creative and offer bottlenecks are usually on the client's side and reporting is when you surface them.

Send it on the same day every month, with the same metrics in the same order. Consistency does more for client confidence than any dashboard.

FAQ

Should clients give me admin access or partner access?

Partner access, granted from their Business Manager to your agency Business Manager by Business ID. It connects two organisations rather than individuals, so your staff changes don't require the client to do anything, and revoking it later removes your whole team at once. You typically need advertiser or admin on the ad account, content access on the Page, and access to the pixel.

Can I run client ads from my own ad account?

You can, and you shouldn't. The client's pixel history, ad history and social proof would live in an account they don't own, and none of it transfers cleanly when the relationship ends. It also exposes their campaigns to any restriction placed on your account. Run everything inside the client's own ad account.

Who should own the Meta pixel?

The client. The pixel accumulates the conversion history Meta's optimisation depends on, it cannot be moved between businesses cleanly, and it is usually the most valuable asset in the account. Same answer for domain verification, which must sit with whoever controls the domain.

How do I hand an account back when a client leaves?

Pause rather than delete campaigns, leave naming and structure intact, confirm the client's Business Manager still owns every asset, provide a final report with learnings and the winning creative, then have them revoke your partner access. Agreeing this process at the start makes clients far more comfortable granting access on day one.

What should I report to clients each month?

Three layers: the business numbers (spend, attributed revenue, blended return, cost per acquisition against target), the diagnosis (what changed, what you tested, what won), and the plan (next actions plus what you need from them). Keep it to two pages, same metrics in the same order every month.