What paid media agencies need at handover
What to confirm about ad account control, reporting access, and campaign assets when work moves between suppliers.
Paid media handover has a habit of looking complete right up until someone needs to make a change. Reports exist. Campaigns are live. Screenshots prove the work happened. But that still does not tell you who controls the live platform setup.
What gets confused with control
Paid media work can look operationally healthy long before the incoming team has enough control to run it safely.
Campaigns are live, so the team assumes platform control must already be fine.
A reporting deck exists, so everyone assumes the measurement setup is understood.
The incoming team can see the account, so the agency assumes it can actually operate it.
Project record
Quarterly acquisition campaigns
Must resolve
Meta Ads admin route missing
Campaigns are running, but the incoming agency cannot safely administer the account.
Needs checking
Reporting deck supplied
The report exists, but the underlying analytics and conversion sources still need confirming.
This is why paid media handover should never be reduced to “we got the latest report”. The real question is whether the incoming team can operate the campaigns, not just observe them.
Worth checking before sign-off
These are usually the first points of failure when campaign control looks fine on paper but is still dependent on someone else.
Meta Ads and Google Ads admin routes
Analytics and reporting property ownership
Audience, pixel, and conversion event control
Creative source files and editable campaign assets
Any platform billing or business-manager dependencies
Pressure test
If spend resumed tomorrow, could the incoming team actually operate the platforms, or would they still be waiting on someone else?
Safe paid media handover is about control, not presentation. If the platforms, audiences, and measurement routes are not truly in the agency’s hands, the account is still exposed.
A campaign can be performing perfectly well and still be risky to inherit. The real test is whether the incoming team can operate the account without waiting for someone else to unlock it.
How Custody helps
Custody helps agencies turn handover into a visible record of what is missing, what is still externally held, and what has actually been verified.