Read Only Access

[ApiUser18]

We want to link our AdWords account with the ones from our customers, as described here

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6139186?hl=en&rd=2#link

Some of them have very high spendings. They fear that we get full permissions if we link the accounts and accidentally mess up something. Therefore they only want to grant us read-only access. Is it possible to to do this ?

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hello, 

Yes, you can grant read-only access to the account. When granting someone permission to your account via Account settings -> Account access -> Choose an access level, you can set the access level to Read-only access

The types of access levels are

• Administrative access
• Standard access
• Read-only access
• Email only access

Cheers,

Anthony

AdWords API Team

[ApiUser18]

Thank you Anthony,

I fear I haven't explained my problem understandable.

We are expected to track online an offline campaigns for our customers. The search campaigns themselves are done by another agency but the tracking should be done by us.

So we're using a AdWords mcc account and wan't to have a read-only view into the campaign-booking AdWords account of our customers.

The customers do not want to grant us full edit access to their account just for tracking - which we understand.

Your supposed solution only works for not-adwords-accounts, right?

So is there any possibility to have read-only access from our mcc account to their adwords account?

thank you in advance,

Kristian

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hi Kristian,

To my knowledge, the only option for read-only MCC access is:

1. Create an MCC under MCC user A
2. Link all AdWords accounts to the MCC
3. Invite another MCC user B to have Read-only access to the MCC

The only problem here is that MCC user A will still have User interface and API access to the MCC. I don't think there's any way to create a purely read-only MCC, where no user has edit access to the accounts under the MCC.

Another option would be for each AdWords account owner to:

1. Create a new user that has read-only access to the AdWords account
2. Using the OAuth web flow (provided by the API developer), generate a refresh token for this read-only user
3. The API developer then stores this refresh token for the account and uses it for API calls against the account.

The advantage to this approach is that there's no MCC involved and, therefore, there's no user that has User interface and API access to all of the accounts.

Regards,

Anthony

AdWords API Team

[ApiUser18]

Regarding the last option what is the difference between users and accounts ? What kind of Google accounts can you invite at "Account settings > Account access" in the MCC client center, only other Google Adwords MCC Accounts, every Google Account, or every user with an E-Mail ?

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hi,

The account is the AdWords application, whereas the user is the one using the account (e.g. the email addresses with access to the account).

The email addresses you invite to access your account need to be Google accounts that do not have access to other AdWords accounts.

For more detailed information, check out this guide under the Granting account access section.