What Google's Third-Party Policy Actually Requires of Your Agency

There is a policy most advertisers have never read and most small agencies would rather they did not. Google's third-party policy governs anyone who manages or resells Google Ads on someone else's behalf, and it grants the advertiser several specific rights. If you are paying an agency, these are the things you are entitled to ask for.

1. The management fee must be disclosed in writing

Where a third party charges a management fee separate from the cost of the advertising itself, Google requires that customers are told in writing before each first sale, and that the fee's existence appears on customer invoices.

The test is simple. Open your last invoice. If you cannot see what you paid Google and what you paid the agency as two distinct figures, the disclosure requirement is not being met.

2. There is a disclosure notice requirement for agencies serving small advertisers

Where 80% or more of a third party's customers spend less than $1,000 USD a month on Google Ads, that third party must share a disclosure notice with all customers, with a link in a clearly discoverable location on their website - Google names the footer of the homepage, the advertiser section, the reporting dashboard, or the services section as examples. Customers must also be told about the notice during new sales and renewals, by email or printed copy.

This one is easy to check from the outside. Look at the agency's footer.

3. You are entitled to your own account IDs

Google requires third parties to provide customers with the customer IDs for their Google Ads accounts when requested. Not a screenshot of them. The IDs.

This matters more than it sounds. The account ID is what lets you verify spend independently, grant access to someone else, or take the account with you. An agency that will not give you the ID is an agency you cannot leave cleanly.

4. You are entitled to real cost and performance data

The requirement is that third parties share Google advertising cost and performance reports in a way that makes them easy for the customer to access - by email or through their website - or alternatively let customers sign in to their own Google advertising accounts to see cost and performance data directly.

A monthly PDF built in a design tool is not the same thing as access. Ask for sign-in access. A practice with nothing to hide will hand it over without a conversation.

5. Your business should have its own account

Google's wording is direct: "Google requires that you use a separate account for each end-advertiser that you manage." Your campaigns should not be sharing an account with another company's. Beyond the policy, Quality Score history is account-level, so a shared account means you inherit someone else's performance record.

What a third party is not allowed to say

The transparency rules have a matching set of prohibitions, and they are enforced hard. Third parties must be "transparent and honest when describing your company, your services, the costs associated with those services, and the results that advertisers can expect." Harassing, abusive, or untrustworthy sales tactics are not allowed.

Google's separate misrepresentation policy prohibits making it seem that you are "supported by another brand, organization or government entity" when you are not, and prohibits "making misleading statements, obscuring, or omitting material information about your identity, affiliations, or qualifications." On results, it prohibits "claims that entice the user with an improbable result (even if this result is possible) as the likely outcome a user can expect."

Enforcement for misrepresentation is classed as egregious: suspension without prior warning.

The badge question

The Google Partner and Premier Partner badges have their own rules. They are earned against performance, spend, and certification requirements that are checked daily. If you do not hold Partner status, "any use of the Partner or Premier Partner badge is a violation of our guidelines and could result in termination from Google Partners" - and imitating the badge is prohibited too.

The badge also cannot be used in any way that implies Google sponsors or endorses the agency. So a badge in a footer is not, on its own, evidence of anything except that the agency met a spend and certification threshold.

We do not display one. We have not earned one.

Five questions worth asking your agency

• What is my Google Ads customer ID?
• Can I have sign-in access to the account, at any permission level?
• On my invoice, which figure went to Google and which went to you?
• Is my business in its own Google Ads account, or shared with others?
• Where is your third-party disclosure notice?

None of these are aggressive questions. All five are things Google's own policy says you should be able to get. An agency that treats them as an accusation has told you something useful.

Sources

• Google Advertising Policies Help - Google third-party policy
• Google Advertising Policies Help - Misrepresentation
• Google Ads Help - Google Partners badge guidelines
• All wording read on 18 September 2026. Google policy changes; check the current pages before relying on any of this.