# The account that wasn't theirs

Two years of campaigns. Custom audiences. Performance history. All of it stayed with the agency.

Had a business come to us after leaving their previous agency. Two years of Google Ads campaigns. Custom audiences built over dozens of iterations. Performance data they'd been making decisions from every month.

All of it was in the agency's account.

When the relationship ended, so did the data. New account. New audiences. New history. Starting from scratch after spending six figures.

Nobody had asked the question at the start: who owns the account?

We now have three standards we apply to every digital engagement — ownership, succession, and transferability. Not because we're trying to be a standards body. Because somebody should be asking these questions before the contract is signed.