How to protect your Google Ads account while you are alive
There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a Google Ads account. While the account holder is alive, Google allows transferring the account and authorized users.
Google decides requests about a Google Ads account after a death case by case, so nothing in its terms promises a survivor anything; what the account holder sets up in advance is what holds. There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a Google Ads account. While the account holder is alive, Google allows transferring the account and authorized users.
How to protect your Google Ads accounts
Naming who acts after a death
What Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)'s terms say about sharing and transfers4
- Transferring the account or registration
Google publishes an ownership transfer for a Google Ads account: from Access and security in the Admin menu, the owner adds the incoming person's Google Account email on the Users tab at the Admin level, sends the invitation, then removes their own access.1
- Authorized users and delegates
Short of a full transfer, the owner can grant other Google Accounts access at admin, standard, read-only or email-only levels.2
Google warns that if an account has only one administrator, access to its tags may be lost if that user becomes unavailable, and advises adding at least one additional administrator.2
- Workspace roles and admin access
A manager (MCC) account is an umbrella Google Ads account with several individual accounts linked to it, and it can be given ownership of a client account.3
- Expiry and activity requirements
An account with no recorded spend for more than 15 months is considered inactive and automatically canceled.4
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Sources
Data sourced from Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.) primary sources (10 pages reviewed). How we research.
Google Ads customer support
Google Ads Help
Website
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