The number of times I go to conferences and hear business owners casually mention that they don’t actually own their Google Ads account, their Bing account, or even their analytics is… mind-blowing. Or we jump on onboarding calls at the agency level and discover there’s no access, no ownership, no logins, and no idea who set things up, so we’re forced to create brand-new ad accounts from scratch. New accounts = no historic data = no learnings = no momentum.

But here’s the truth:

If you don’t know, you don’t know.

And no one teaches this part until it becomes a problem. So let’s break down why owning your accounts (and cleaning up the mess of unnecessary tracking tags on your site) is a non-negotiable in 2025.

You Should Always Own Your Ad Accounts — Full Stop

Here’s why:

You paid for the clicks — you should own the data.

Your performance history, your keywords, your audiences, your conversions… all of that is an asset. That’s yours.

Not an agency’s.

Not a freelancer’s.

YOURS.

If you don’t have admin access, you don’t own any of it.

Switching agencies shouldn’t mean starting from zero.

When your account isn’t yours, guess what happens when you leave that agency? They keep the account. You lose years of data. And suddenly your new team is stuck rebuilding everything from scratch. I’ve seen people spend thousands of dollars over the years, only to walk away with none of their learning because they didn’t own the platform.

You deserve complete transparency.

When you don’t have access, you’re forced to trust reports, screenshots, and someone’s interpretation of what’s happening. But you can’t see the actual settings, targeting, spend, or results. This is your money. You should be able to log in anytime and see what’s really going on.

And Now… Let’s Talk About Your Website Being Held Together by 65 Tracking Scripts

Because this one is just as bad, your website can only take so much code before it slows down — and with today’s user behavior, slow = death. You are literally paying for traffic and sending people to a page that loads slower than a 2007 laptop on 2% battery.

Every script slows you down.

Every GA4 property, every pixel, every heat map, every tracking tag, every “someone installed this in 2019 and no one remembers why” script adds weight to your site. And most businesses don’t use half of what’s installed.

Users are impatient — and getting worse.

People are clicking your ads with the attention span of someone scrolling TikTok at midnight. If your page takes forever to load, they’re gone. You paid for the click, but you didn’t earn the conversion. That’s wasted money — all because of unnecessary tags.

You don’t need nine analytics accounts to understand your audience.

More tags do not mean more insight. More tags mean more chaos, slower load times, and more places for things to break.

Your GTM isn’t a junk drawer.

A tag manager is supposed to organize tracking, not become a cemetery of expired scripts no one has checked in the past 3 years.

The Real Reason This Happens? No One Told You Any Better.

Business owners aren’t taught this. Most don’t know what they should have access to. And agencies don’t always lead with education — they lead with “we’ll handle everything.” But if you want:

• faster performance
• better tracking
• accurate reporting
• lower CPA
• stronger optimization
• and the ability to change teams without losing everything… You need ownership and a clean site.

Here’s What Every Business Owner Should Do Today

Make sure YOU are the account owner/admin of:

• Google Ads
• Microsoft Ads
• Facebook/Meta Ads
• GA4
• Google Tag Manager
• Google Search Console
• Google Business Profile

Everyone else should be added as a user — not the other way around.

Audit your tags

Remove anything you aren’t actively using or reviewing. If it isn’t tied to a business decision, it doesn’t need to be there.

Prioritize page speed

Because your landing page is your closer, if it’s slow, nothing else matters.

The Bottom Line

You’re spending real money to drive real people to your site. Don’t let a lack of ownership or a bloated, slow website sabotage your results.

⇢ Own your accounts.

⇢ Clean your tracking.

⇢ Protect your data.

And don’t let your ad dollars go to waste on a landing page that takes longer to load than your morning coffee order.