Agency ad account or your own account?

We supply agency ad accounts, so treat the following with appropriate suspicion: most advertisers do not need one. If you can open your own account and advertise from it without friction, that is the better option, and this article is mostly about how to work out whether you are in that group.

Cost

Self-serve wins outright. You pay the platform what your advertising costs and nothing else. An agency account adds a provider's margin — typically a percentage of what you fund — and often a subscription on top.

That premium buys access and support. It does not buy cheaper media: your cost per click is set by the same auction either way, and a provider who suggests their accounts deliver cheaper results is describing something that does not exist. If access is not a problem for you, the premium is buying nothing.

Control

Closer than most people expect. In both cases you build and run campaigns in the platform's own interface with full control over targeting, budget, bidding and creative. A well-run provider has read access for reporting and no ability to change your campaigns.

The difference is administrative rather than operational: billing, account settings and the relationship with the platform sit with the provider. Day to day, the person running campaigns will not notice.

Ownership and portability

This is the real cost of an agency account, and it is the one people discover late.

• Campaigns do not transfer between accounts. Changing provider, or moving to your own account later, means rebuilding campaign structure and re-uploading creative.
• Learning and conversion history do not transfer either. Platform optimisation improves with accumulated data, and that accumulation is attached to the account rather than to you. A move resets it.
• Some assets you can keep, if you set it up correctly. Your tracking pixel, your product catalogue, your business page — these should belong to your own business and be granted to the ad account, not created inside somebody else's.

Risk

Different in shape rather than in size. With your own account you carry the platform's decisions directly: a suspension is yours to appeal, and your card is attached to your account. With an agency account you carry counterparty risk as well — the provider holds your funded balance, and if they fail or disappear, that money is exposed in a way it is not when it sits with the platform.

That is a real reason to care who you are contracting with, and to prefer a provider with a registered legal entity, published terms and a written refund position over one with a good landing page. Either way, why ad accounts get suspended covers the failure both models share.

Setup time

Self-serve is usually faster when it works — minutes to an account, hours to approval. An agency account takes days, because a human reviews the application and an account has to be provisioned. But self-serve is only fast when it succeeds; an advertiser stuck in a rejection loop can spend weeks getting nowhere, and days becomes the faster answer.

So which one?

Open your own account if…

• You are advertising in a country where the platform offers self-serve signup.
• Your business has some trading history and can pass standard verification.
• You are spending modestly enough that a percentage fee is material to you.
• You want the cleanest possible ownership of your advertising history.

Consider an agency account if…

• The platform does not offer self-serve signup in your market.
• You have been unable to get approved despite being a legitimate business.
• You need to advertise into markets where you have no registered entity.
• You are running enough volume that support and account continuity are worth paying for.
• You are managing accounts for several clients and need them provisioned quickly.

A test that cuts through it

Try to open your own account first. It costs nothing but time, and the outcome answers the question. If it works, you have your answer and you have saved the fee. If it does not, you now know precisely which barrier you are dealing with, which makes the conversation with any provider far more productive — and lets an honest one tell you quickly whether they can solve your particular problem.

If you get to that second outcome, what we supply and what we require is set out in full, and our pricing is published rather than quoted privately.