How Verification Works When an Agency Runs the Account
Google verifies the advertiser, and for an agency-managed account the advertiser is your client. Ad disclosures show the client's legal name and location, and Google pulls the payer name for verified agency accounts from the client's payments profile. Google's own FAQ tells agencies to complete the verification process for each unique advertiser they represent.
Someone at your agency can act as the authorized representative and submit documents for the client. Those documents still have to carry the client's name and address. Your agency's registration certificate cannot stand in for the client's.
Answer Yes to the Agency Question
Verification opens with organization questions about your organization type and who pays for the ads. One of them asks whether you are an agency. Answer yes. Google states that agencies who answer no may see the account paused or suspended.
Agencies answer no for understandable reasons. A freelancer may not think of themselves as an agency. An in-house marketer at a holding company may assume the parent company counts as the advertiser. If you run ads for a business you do not own, answer as an agency.
The Two Tasks Agencies Complete
Google splits the agency path into two tasks:
- Agency info: You verify your own agency through one or more methods: Dun & Bradstreet details, organization documents, phone confirmation, or, in the US, Social Security number confirmation.
- Client info: You select or create a payments profile for the client. You can only select profiles where you hold admin rights. If the client's profile is not yet verified, the client completes a separate verification, and Google emails you when it clears.
If you lack admin rights on the client's payments profile, send the client the task link from your account so they can finish the step themselves. Google applies the same process to Google Ad Grants accounts, so nonprofit clients follow this path too.
How Your Billing Setup Changes the Process
Your billing arrangement decides which verification flow you see:
- Client pays through its own payments profile: You can verify the accounts billed to that profile from your manager account.
- Agency pays through its own payments profile: Your client has to verify its identity first. You enter the client's business name and at least one client contact. Google emails the client an invitation to select or create a payments profile and upload identity documents. That profile does not change billing or give the client account access. Once Google verifies the client, you select the verified advertiser on the Accounts page and attach the accounts.
- Monthly invoicing: Large agencies on monthly invoicing can verify at the manager account level and choose a disclosure name from the payments profile or an approved trademark.
- US agencies with a Sequential Liability agreement: You verify the client's secondary payments profile, marked "(Secondary)," in place of your own.
Watch the invitation clock. Google gives the client 20 days to complete the invitation, after which you have to resend it. A client who ignores the first email can eat most of a 30-day deadline before anyone on your team notices.
Verifying Many Client Accounts at Once
Google offers bulk verification to selected agencies and large advertisers by invitation. A manager account admin opens Admin, then Policy, then Accounts, and selects Get Started. You answer the identity and payment questions, pick the disclosure name, and select the unverified accounts billed to that payments profile. Bulk verification comes with three catches:
- Automatic verification of future accounts works only if you select every account in the table while logged into the paying manager account.
- You cannot revoke a disclosure name from the manager account yourself. Fixing a mistake takes a support ticket.
- The Accounts table does not show business operations verification status, so you have to check each client account for those tasks on its own.
Only manager account admins can see the Accounts page. Other users see a grayed-out Verify link.
A Client Account Paused Under Your Manager Account?
One client's verification problem can spread across a manager account, and the clean-up is different when an agency is in the middle. Send us the affected accounts and the notice Google sent, and within 48 hours you get a written read on what went wrong and what it takes to clear it.
Getting Clients to Cooperate
Your longest delays will come from clients: owners who ignore emails, cannot find their registration certificate, or set up their payments profile under a personal name years ago. Build verification into onboarding so you hold what you need before Google asks:
- The legal business name as it appears on the registration document, suffix included.
- A color scan of the registration document and any industry license.
- The name of the payments profile admin, plus confirmation that the profile type (individual or organization) matches the business.
- A signed services agreement that names your agency.
- A client contact who commits to responding within 48 hours when Google sends a task.
On individual payments profiles, Google requires the payments profile admin to record any video selfie. Your team cannot do that step, so warn the client before the task appears.
Business Operations Verification and the Agency Relationship
If Google selects a client for business operations verification, the form asks who else has access to the account. Name your agency. Google lists undisclosed marketing agencies with account access among the reasons business operations answers fail. Back the relationship with your services agreement, a letter on agency letterhead, or an invoice. Our guide to business operations verification covers the full value chain Google expects a client to disclose.
Google may also send an affiliation confirmation: a six-digit code delivered by SMS or organization email to the contact details in the account. Google added this affiliation step for agencies and freelancers in June 2024. You can skip it unless the account has a deadline, in which case you have to complete it.
Review client websites with the same care. If a client's site claims a partnership, award, or certification it cannot document, Google can treat the claim as misrepresentation, and you carry that risk as the agency running the ads. Our guide on how to Resolve Google Ads Misrepresentation Policy covers the cleanup.
How One Client Can Affect Your Manager Account
Google holds agencies responsible for patterns. In its November 2024 update to the third-party policy, Google said third parties that enable significant or sustained policy violations face loss of privileges, removal from programs such as Google Partners, and account suspension. For egregious cases, Google suspends the accounts on detection and bars the third party from advertising again.
Your clients share that exposure. Google can pause an individual account because the manager account linked to it violates the third-party policy, and the client then has to unlink from your manager account to resume ads. If you treat verification as an afterthought across your client base, you can lose clients who never broke a rule themselves.
False Information and the Circumventing Systems Policy
On November 4, 2025, Google added an example to its Circumventing Systems policy stating that advertisers who give false information during verification will lose verified status and have their accounts suspended. Google said the update restated existing enforcement. Agencies get into trouble through a familiar set of shortcuts:
- Editing a client's document so the name matches the payments profile.
- Verifying the agency as the advertiser to skip the client step.
- Answering no to the agency question.
- Opening a new client account under your manager account after Google paused the original.
If Google has already suspended a client or your manager account on these grounds, our guide on how to Resolve Google Ads Circumventing Systems Policy explains the appeal process and the evidence Google expects.
An Agency Verification Checklist
- Collect legal names, registration documents, licenses, and signed agreements during onboarding.
- Confirm that each client's payments profile type, name, address, and country match their documents.
- Decide who pays for each account and follow the matching verification flow.
- Answer yes to the agency question in each account you manage.
- Track deadlines per client in a shared sheet, with the 20-day invitation window noted.
- Check each account for business operations tasks, since bulk tables do not show them.
- Review your manager account for policy notices each week.
The Bottom Line
Agency verification adds a second identity to each check: yours and your client's. Answer yes to the agency question, verify each client under its own legal name, collect documents before Google asks, and watch both the invitation window and the deadline. Google judges your manager account by how you handle the clients inside it.
If a client's verification has failed, an account is paused, or your manager account has received a policy notice, contact our technical team and we will review the affected accounts with you.