You will be able to set up Meta business assets so you own them and can give others safe access.
Last year Farah hired a freelancer to take over her ads for a while. He set up a new ad account under his own login, installed a pixel he had created, and ran campaigns for six months. When they parted ways, the ad account, the pixel and six months of data on who bought from her went with him. She had to start again from nothing, and the new pixel knew nothing about her customers.
Stories like this are common, and almost all of them are avoidable in an hour. Before you build a single campaign, set up the accounts so your business owns them, other people get only the access they need, and nobody can take them away.
Meta's business tools let you hold everything to do with your advertising in one business account: your Facebook Page, your Instagram account, your ad account, your pixel and any custom audiences. You manage it through Meta Business Suite and its business settings. Meta has renamed the underlying account more than once, so if a screen uses a different word, look for the area where you add people, pages and ad accounts.
The point is ownership. When the ad account and pixel sit inside a business account that you control, they belong to the business, not to whichever person clicked create. People come and go. The assets stay.
TikTok and Google work on the same idea, with their own versions. TikTok has a business centre for managing ad accounts and people. Google lets you link accounts under a manager account and add users with different levels of access. Whichever platforms you use, the principle is the same.
Set up your business account with yourself as an admin, and add a second trusted person as an admin too, such as a business partner. If you are ever locked out, someone else can get you back in.
Create the ad account and the pixel from inside the business account, so the business owns them from the start. If an older ad account or pixel was made under someone's personal profile, move it into the business account or ask the person who holds it to transfer it while you are still on good terms.
When you work with an agency or a freelancer, do not give them your password. Meta's business settings let you add a partner, which is another business account, and give it access to specific assets, such as your ad account and pixel, with specific permissions. They work from their own login. When the work ends, you remove the partner, and your data stays with you. Individual staff can be added as people with limited roles in the same way.
Priya learned this from Farah's story before she ever ran an ad. When she later hired a freelancer, she added his agency as a partner with access to her ad account only, not her Page settings or billing.
Ad accounts are a target for scammers. A hijacked account can be used to run scam ads charged to your card, or to take over your Page and its followers. Messages pretending to be from Meta, warning that your Page will be disabled unless you click a link and log in, are a common way in.
Turn on two-factor authentication for everyone with access to your business account. Meta lets you require it for all people in the business through its security settings. Use an authenticator app where you can. Treat any message asking you to log in through a link with suspicion, and go to the platform directly instead.
The last step is the one people leave until the campaign is ready, and then lose a day to. Add a payment method to the ad account and check the billing settings before you build anything.
Check the currency and time zone of the ad account carefully when you create it. Both affect how reports and budgets read, and they can be awkward to change later, sometimes needing a new ad account. For a Singapore business, Singapore dollars and Singapore time are usually right.
Look at how you will be charged. Depending on your account and payment method, you may be billed when spending reaches a threshold or at set intervals, and the details differ by platform and country. Check the current billing page for your account, and set a spending limit for the ad account while you are learning, so a mistake cannot run up a large bill.
Finally, check who receives billing emails and receipts. If an agency is running your ads with your card, you should still see every charge.
Look at your own setup with fresh eyes. In the activity below you will list every ad account, page and pixel your business has, and confirm who owns each one and who has access.
List the ad accounts, pages and pixels your business has and confirm who owns each and who has access.
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