Setting up Agency-Client Relationships in Microsoft Advertising adCenter

Isn’t it nice when you get someone’s number? That is no different than getting their adCenter customer number as the first step to start a relationship.

As an adCenter Program Manager, I often get asked how an agency can manage an account on behalf of their client in adCenter. The adCenter agency management feature is designed to let advertising agencies manage their clients' adCenter accounts conveniently from a single location, but first you need to initiate the agency/client relationship. Don’t be nervous! I’m going to walk you through the process, step by step, and before you know it, you’ll be on your way.

There are two ways to initiate an agency/client relationship. One way is for the Agency to send an invite to the Client, the second is for the Client to send an invite to the Agency. Before you can invite someone to be in a relationship, you have to know their number, right? This is the case with adCenter, too. Whether you’re the Agency or the Client, you need to know the other party’s customer number and email address. The customer number is located at the bottom of the “Company Information” tab within “Accounts and Billing”.

Once it’s been decided who will be the initiator, the next step is to send an invite. To do this, navigate to the “Accounts & Billing” tab in adCenter and click on the “Agency Management” tab. There you will find a grid containing an actionable button with the option to invite an Agency. Once you click on that button, an invite form will open where you need to enter the customer number of the party you want to send the invite to. If you are the Agency, it will be the Client’s “Customer number”. If you are the Client, it will be the Agency’s “Customer number”. You also need to enter the e-mail where you want the invite to be sent to. After you send the invitation, you will see a grid under the “Agency Management“ tab with the pending invite.

It takes two to get in a relationship and now it’s time for the other person to do their part. Once your invite is sent using the previous steps, the other party needs to log in to adCenter, navigate to the “Accounts & Billing” tab and select the “Agency Management” tab. The page will show a grid with the available invitations that can be either accepted or declined. Accepting the invitation will grant the Agency access to all of the Client’s accounts. The next time either party logs in to adCenter and goes to the “Agency Management” tab, they will see that the status of the invite is no longer pending. Instead, there would be an option to “Terminate relationship” which would remove the Agency’s access to the Client’s accounts.

There is one more step that needs to happen before you’re ready to manage the relationship as an agency, and it’s one that often gets overlooked. In order for you to manage your Client’s accounts from a single location, you need to create a new “Client Admin” user role and new sign in credentials for yourself. To do this, navigate to the “Accounts & Billing” tab in adCenter and then click on the “Users” tab where you’ll see a grid with a button to “Create new user profile”. Click that button and fill in the form.

Before submitting the form, check the “Roles” option on the left. Select “Client Admin” and all of the clients that you’ve sent/received an invitation to manage will be listed. If you want to use this new set of sign in credentials to manage all clients with a single login, make sure to check all clients in the list. If you want this set of credentials to just manage certain clients, make sure to only select those.

Once you have selected the role and clients you can go ahead and save.

You’re almost done! Now you need to activate the new user role you just set up, as soon as you receive the email notification to do so.

Once you complete the activation you can now use this new set of sign in credentials to manage all clients or the specified clients with a single login. Give it a try! After signing in you will see a list of accounts assigned to you. Choose the one you’re ready to work on and you’re all set.

If at any point you want to change the client that you are working on, just click on the customer name in the breadcrumb and that will take you back to the list of clients you saw when you signed in to adCenter.

You are all set to start getting numbers and start relationships! Thanks for reading!