Switch PPC agencies without dropping the ball on performance

Changing PPC agency should not mean wiping the slate clean. Your Google Ads account already contains months or years of useful information. It knows which keywords convert, which search terms waste money, which audiences respond, which campaigns struggle and which landing pages work. Increasingly, Google's automated bidding systems are also using that historical conversion data to make decisions.

Throwing all of that away because a new agency wants to start fresh can be an expensive mistake.

A good PPC handover should preserve what is working, understand what is not and make changes deliberately rather than rebuilding the account for the sake of putting a new agency's stamp on it.

Why PPC agency handovers go wrong

Most handovers do not fail because changing agency is inherently risky. They fail because the transition is badly managed.

Common problems include:

• The previous agency owns the ad account
• Conversion tracking disappears
• Analytics access is lost
• Campaigns are rebuilt unnecessarily
• Automated bidding is reset
• Historical data is ignored
• Billing details are changed incorrectly
• Call tracking numbers stop working
• CRM integrations break
• Nobody understands why the existing campaigns were structured the way they were
• The new agency changes everything at once

Any one of those can hurt performance. Several happening simultaneously can make it impossible to know what caused the decline.

A good PPC handover should feel like changing the driver, not replacing the entire car.

Keep ownership of your advertising accounts

This is the first thing to check. Your business should own its advertising accounts. That includes things such as:

• Google Ads
• Microsoft Ads
• Meta Business Manager
• Google Analytics
• Google Tag Manager
• Merchant Center
• Call tracking
• CRM integrations

Your agency should have access to them. It should not control them. Both platforms are built for exactly this: Google through account access levels, and Meta through partner access, which lets an agency work inside assets your business continues to own.

If your existing agency created your Google Ads account inside its own manager account, that is not necessarily a problem. If the agency refuses to give you administrative access or claims the account belongs to them, that is a much bigger issue.

You are paying for the traffic. You should retain the data.

Check access before giving notice

Do this before the relationship becomes awkward. Make sure at least one internal person has full administrative access to all important platforms.

Do not wait until the final day of the contract to discover nobody knows the Google Tag Manager login.

Do not rebuild campaigns unnecessarily

New agencies sometimes like clean accounts. That does not mean your business needs one.

There are legitimate reasons to rebuild a campaign. Perhaps the structure is fundamentally wrong. Perhaps conversion tracking has changed. Perhaps the account has become bloated after years of patchwork management. Perhaps the business has changed significantly.

But "this isn't how we structure accounts" is not automatically a good enough reason.

Existing campaigns may contain valuable:

• Conversion history
• Search term data
• Quality signals
• Audience data
• Bid strategy learning
• Creative performance
• Keyword history

A new agency should understand the current structure before replacing it. Sometimes the best decision during the first month is to make very few changes.

Protect conversion tracking

If I had to choose one part of a handover that deserves the most attention, it would probably be tracking. Campaign performance is only as good as the data feeding it.

Your setup may include:

• Google Ads conversion tracking
• GA4 events
• Google Tag Manager
• Enhanced conversions
• Call tracking
• Offline conversion imports
• CRM integrations
• Meta Pixel
• Conversion API
• Consent management

Changing agency does not automatically break these. Changing access, websites, tags or integrations can.

Before the handover, document exactly what is being tracked. For lead generation, that may include lead forms, calls, bookings, qualified leads, sales and revenue.

Then confirm that the same conversions continue to fire after the agency change.

Check primary and secondary conversions

This is also a good opportunity to understand what Google is actually optimising towards. Google's documentation on primary and secondary conversion actions explains which feed bidding and which are observation only.

You may discover that the previous account was bidding against things like:

• Contact page views
• Email clicks
• Form starts
• WhatsApp clicks

alongside genuine leads.

Do not immediately remove everything. First understand the impact those conversions may have had on bidding. Then clean the setup up carefully.

Preserve historical performance data

Your existing account is valuable partly because of its history. Even if the performance is poor now, the account can tell the new agency:

• What has been tested before
• Which campaigns previously worked
• When performance started declining
• Which search terms convert
• Which competitors appear regularly
• Which bidding strategies have been tried
• Which landing pages perform best
• Whether seasonality affects results

If the new agency simply creates a new account, much of that context disappears. Google Ads data should therefore stay where possible.

The same applies to analytics. Historical GA4, CRM and call-tracking data can help diagnose whether the PPC account itself is actually the problem.

Get access before the old agency leaves

There should ideally be a short overlap. The new agency does not necessarily need to actively manage the account while the existing agency still controls it. But it should be able to inspect it.

That allows the new team to understand:

• Campaign structure
• Conversion tracking
• Budgets
• Bid strategies
• Search terms
• Audiences
• Placements
• Scripts
• Rules
• Experiments
• Landing pages

That is far better than starting on Monday morning with no idea what has been happening.

Ask the outgoing agency for context

If the relationship has remained professional, ask them to provide:

• Current strategy
• Active tests
• Recent changes
• Known problems
• Important seasonality
• Tracking setup
• Budget allocation
• Upcoming activity
• Creative requirements

A good outgoing agency should be able to make the transition relatively painless.

Document what is currently working

Do not assume everything needs fixing because you are changing agency.

Perhaps the reason you are leaving is poor communication. Or lack of strategic thinking. Or declining performance in one part of the account. That does not mean every campaign is bad.

Before making major changes, ask what should not be touched.

For example, Campaign A may be generating qualified leads at an excellent cost while Campaign B is struggling. The sensible approach is usually to protect Campaign A while investigating Campaign B. Not rebuild both.

Avoid making too many changes at once

This is one of the easiest ways to damage a handover. Imagine the new agency arrives and immediately:

• Rebuilds campaigns
• Changes bidding strategy
• Rewrites ads
• Changes budgets
• Adds new landing pages
• Changes conversion actions
• Adjusts location targeting
• Changes match types

Performance drops. What caused it? Nobody knows. There are too many variables.

Good PPC management requires controlled change. During a takeover, that becomes even more important.

I would normally rather identify the biggest two or three problems first and deal with those than try to optimise everything in week one.

Review automated bidding carefully

Modern PPC accounts rely heavily on automation. Campaigns may be using:

• Maximise Conversions
• Target CPA
• Maximise Conversion Value
• Target ROAS
• Performance Max

These systems rely on conversion data. Large structural changes can temporarily destabilise performance.

That does not mean you should never change bidding. It means you should understand the consequences before doing it.

For example, if a campaign has historically been optimising towards a broad collection of conversion actions and you suddenly remove most of them, Google's bidding signal changes significantly. That may be the correct decision. But it should be intentional.

Do not chase the learning phase

Agencies sometimes become too afraid of disrupting automated bidding. That can be just as harmful. A bad campaign does not deserve permanent protection simply because Google is learning.

There is a balance. Preserve useful data. Avoid unnecessary disruption. But change things that genuinely need changing.

Check billing, integrations and third-party tools

Some of the most annoying handover problems have nothing to do with campaign strategy.

Check who owns and pays for:

• Call tracking
• Reporting software
• Landing page software
• Feed management
• Heatmapping
• Data connectors
• CRM integrations

Your current agency may have been supplying some of these tools as part of its service. If it cancels them when your contract ends, you need replacements ready. Fee structures often bundle software in, which is one reason to understand what PPC agencies charge for before you compare two proposals.

Call tracking deserves particular attention

If campaigns are using dynamic call tracking numbers, confirm what happens when the old agency leaves. Losing access could break:

• Phone attribution
• Website number swapping
• Conversion imports
• Call recordings

That can create a sudden apparent collapse in conversion performance even if the campaigns themselves have not changed.

What a good PPC handover should include

Before the transition is complete, I would want clarity on all of the following.

This does not need to become a three-month migration project. It simply needs somebody to take responsibility for the details.

When should the new agency start changing things?

Immediately where there is an obvious problem. Slowly where there is not.

For example, I would not wait weeks to fix:

• Broken conversion tracking
• Completely irrelevant search terms
• Advertising in the wrong country
• A campaign spending heavily with no commercial value
• Obvious budget leakage

But if an existing campaign is performing well, there is no reason to rebuild it on day one.

A sensible first month often looks something like this.

Week 1: understand

Audit campaigns, tracking, sales data and previous performance.

Week 2: fix obvious waste

Deal with anything clearly broken or commercially damaging.

Week 3: prioritise

Build a roadmap based on the biggest opportunities.

Week 4 onwards: improve

Start testing changes in a controlled way.

The exact timing depends on the account. The principle is what matters.

Understand before rebuilding.

Should you tell your current agency you are leaving?

Yes. Assuming there is no serious reason not to, keep the transition professional.

You may be unhappy with the agency. That does not mean creating unnecessary conflict helps you. You need access, information, cooperation and a clean handover.

Your new agency may also need to ask questions. A professional outgoing team should understand that clients sometimes leave.

Likewise, the incoming agency should avoid turning the process into an exercise in criticising everything the previous team did. There are usually reasons why an account evolved the way it did. Understand those reasons first.

Do you need to pause advertising during the handover?

Normally, no. Changing agency should not require campaigns to stop running. The same campaigns can continue operating while account access changes.

There may occasionally be unusual circumstances where pausing makes sense. But for most businesses, stopping advertising simply creates another disruption you do not need.

The objective should be a seamless transition. From the customer's perspective, nothing should change.

What if the existing agency owns the account?

This is more difficult. Start by asking for administrative access and account ownership to be transferred where possible. Do not assume you need to create a new account immediately.

If transfer genuinely is not possible, then the new agency may need to rebuild. If that happens, export as much information as possible first:

• Keywords
• Search terms
• Ads
• Conversion history
• Campaign settings
• Negative keywords
• Audiences
• Performance reports
• Landing pages

It will not preserve everything. But it prevents the new team from operating completely blind.

This is also why account ownership should be agreed properly at the beginning of an agency relationship, not at the end.

A new agency should not promise instant improvement

Be wary of anyone who audits your account for 30 minutes and tells you they can immediately cut your CPA in half.

They may find obvious opportunities. But PPC accounts are connected to:

• Your website
• Your market
• Your pricing
• Your offer
• Your sales team
• Your competition

A strong new agency should be confident enough to identify problems without pretending every account can be transformed overnight. Sometimes performance improves quickly. Sometimes the first priority is simply stabilising what is already there. That is equally true whether you appoint an agency or a PPC consultant.

Conclusion

Switching PPC agencies does not need to damage performance. The key is to avoid treating the handover like a complete restart.

Keep your advertising accounts. Protect your tracking. Preserve your historical data. Give the new agency access early enough to understand what is happening. Identify what already works. Then make improvements deliberately.

The biggest risk is not changing agency. It is changing too much without understanding the consequences.

Keep the data. Keep what works. Change what does not.

Thinking about changing PPC agencies?

We can audit your existing account before the handover, identify what should be preserved and build a transition plan designed to minimise disruption. You do not need to shut campaigns down or throw years of data away just because you want a different agency managing them.

Book a free PPC account audit See our PPC management services

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