Who Approves Campaign Changes at an Agency? A Practical Guide to Sign-Off

At most agencies, no single person approves every campaign change. The approver depends on how big, risky, or expensive the change is, and on what the client contract says. A specialist can add a negative keyword on their own, a team lead usually reviews a bidding strategy switch, and the client signs off on anything that touches budget, strategy, or brand claims.

This guide covers who approves campaign changes at an agency, which changes need which sign-off, and how to set up a workflow that keeps accounts safe without turning every tweak into a three-day email thread.

The Short Answer: Approval Depends on the Type of Change

There is no industry-standard rule for this, so treat anything you read about "the" approval process, including the matrix below, as a starting template. In practice, most agencies land on a tiered model:

• Tier 1, routine: the specialist makes the change and logs it. Think negative keywords and small bid tweaks.
• Tier 2, structural: a senior strategist, team lead, or account lead reviews it first. Think new campaigns, bidding strategy switches, and large budget reallocations.
• Tier 3, client-owned: the client approves explicitly. Think spend increases, strategy shifts, offers, and brand or legal claims.

Three factors decide which tier a change belongs in:

1. Financial exposure. How much money could this move, and how fast?
2. Reversibility. Can you undo it in a click, or does it reset learning, burn budget, or put a claim in front of the public?
3. Scope. Does it change what the client agreed to in the scope of work (SOW)?

A change that is cheap, reversible, and inside scope can be pre-approved. A change that fails any one of those tests deserves a second pair of eyes.

Agency size shifts who fills each role. A solo freelancer has no internal reviewer, so the client is often the only check, which is exactly why a written threshold matters. At a larger agency, a peer or team lead usually adds a review layer between the specialist and the client. Two misconceptions are worth dropping early: the client does not need to approve everything, and the specialist should not be able to do anything.

The Roles Involved: Who Sits Where in the Approval Chain

Titles vary a lot from one agency to the next, so read these as common patterns, not a standard org chart. The same person may wear two hats at a small shop.

PPC specialist or account manager

This person proposes and executes day-to-day changes: search term cleanup, ad testing, bid adjustments, pacing checks. They also keep the change log, which is the paper trail everyone else relies on later. They own the first judgment call on whether a change is routine or needs escalating.

Senior strategist, team lead, or head of paid media

This reviewer looks at structural changes: launching new campaigns, switching bidding strategies, and making large budget moves between campaigns. Their job is not to re-do the work. It is to catch the things a person close to the account can miss, such as a new campaign cannibalizing an existing one or a bidding switch with too little conversion data behind it.

Client stakeholder

The client owns budget, goals, offers, and brand claims, and holds the final say on spend increases. Ideally one named person is authorized to approve, not a whole thread of people who each assume someone else replied. If you are a client reading this, that is the role you are being asked to play, and it should be a narrow one.

Finance or account director

Occasionally involved, and only when a change affects invoicing, ad spend commitments, or contract scope. For example, a client asking to double the budget and add two new platforms is a commercial conversation as much as a campaign one. The account director decides whether it fits the current agreement or needs a new one.

Which Changes Need Whose Sign-Off: A Sample Approval Matrix

The table below is illustrative. It is a template to adapt, not data from a study or a standard, and your thresholds should reflect your clients and your risk tolerance.

Because the HTML for this article does not support tables, the matrix is laid out as a list. Each row reads: change, risk level, who approves, and what the client gets.

• Adding negative keywords for clearly irrelevant search terms: low risk. Specialist approves. Client sees it in the weekly summary.
• Pausing a low-performing ad: low risk. Specialist approves. Summary only.
• Changing match types on existing keywords: low to medium risk. Specialist approves, with lead review if applied account-wide. Summary only.
• Adjusting bids within a pre-agreed range (say, 15 percent): low risk. Specialist approves. Summary only.
• Switching bidding strategy: medium to high risk. Team lead approves. Client gets a heads-up before the change.
• Raising the monthly budget: high risk. Client approves in writing, with the lead reviewing the plan.
• Launching a new campaign: medium to high risk. Team lead reviews. Client approves if it falls outside the SOW or adds spend.
• Changing ad copy claims or landing pages: high risk. Lead reviews and the client approves explicitly.

The logic is simple. Low-risk, easily reversed changes can be pre-approved, because asking permission costs more than the change could ever cost to fix. Anything involving spend, strategy, or legal and brand claims needs explicit approval, because mistakes there are expensive or public.

One distinction deserves care: positive and negative keywords are not equal. Excluding a clearly irrelevant search term with a negative keyword is conservative, since it narrows where ads can show. Adding new positive keywords, especially on broad match, widens traffic and spend, so it sits a tier higher. Remember too that a search term is what a person actually typed, while a keyword is what you chose to target. Turning a search term into a keyword is a decision, not a cleanup.

Where the Approval Rules Come From: Contracts, SOWs, and Client Preferences

Authority is set on paper, not by habit. The scope of work or service agreement is where spend caps, change thresholds, and the names of client-side people who can authorize changes should live. If your SOW says nothing about this, the default becomes whoever shouted loudest during the last dispute.

Clients differ, and it shows up fast. Some want pre-approval for every change. Others want a weekly summary and nothing else. Confirm the preference at onboarding and put it in writing, even if it is a two-line email reply to your proposed matrix.

Regulated industries

Healthcare, finance, and legal advertisers usually need stricter sign-off on ad copy, since claims can trigger platform policy issues or legal exposure. Exact requirements vary by country and by platform policy, so check Google Ads policies and your client's legal or compliance requirements for their industry. In these accounts it is common for a compliance reviewer to sit in the chain for any copy or landing page change.

Account access

How the agency connects to the account affects who can technically make and see changes. Agencies typically work either through a manager account linked to the client's account or through direct access granted to individual users, and Google Ads uses access levels that limit what each user can do. Specifics change, so check Google Ads Help on access levels and manager account linking before you design your process around them. The practical point: if only some of your team can edit, your approval chain should match who can actually press the button.

How to Build an Approval Workflow That Doesn't Slow You Down

Start with the structure, then add habits.

1. Define your change tiers. Use the three factors: exposure, reversibility, and scope.
2. Set pre-approved thresholds. For example, bid adjustments within a set percentage, or negatives for clearly irrelevant search terms.
3. Agree on turnaround times. A reasonable rule is that a client has a set number of business days to respond, and you state what happens if they do not.
4. Pick one channel for requests. One email thread or one project tool, not five.

Keep a written change log, and check it against the Google Ads change history, which records what was changed, when, and by whom. As of this writing it is found under the Tools menu, but menus move, so confirm the current location and fields in Google Ads Help. If the log and the history disagree, you have found a process gap.

Batch the low-risk work. A weekly search terms review is the classic example, and you report it afterward instead of asking permission item by item.

Here is an illustrative weekly routine. Every Tuesday, the specialist reviews the Search Terms Report, adds negative keywords for clear junk, and flags any promising search terms as proposed keywords instead of adding them. Then they send the client three lines: how many negatives were added, which themes they covered, and which proposed keywords await a decision.

Because adding negatives and applying match types happen directly in the Search Terms Report, a tool like Keywordme can make that pre-approved cleanup quick without a spreadsheet detour. It speeds up the clicks. It does not handle approvals or make changes on its own, so the decisions stay with you.

Common Approval Mistakes Agencies Make

• Unclear ownership. Everyone assumes someone else approved it, so changes either ship unreviewed or stall for days. Name one approver per tier.
• Over-gating. Asking clients to approve routine negatives creates delays and approval fatigue, and clients start rubber-stamping the requests that matter. Save their attention for spend, strategy, and brand.
• Verbal approvals with no record. When performance drops, a call nobody wrote down leaves the agency exposed. Follow every verbal yes with a one-line email.
• No expected impact or rollback plan. An approval for "switch to a different bidding strategy" means little. Say what you expect to happen, what you will watch, and how you would revert.
• Freelancers skipping review entirely. Without a peer, build a self-checklist: Is this within the agreed thresholds? What is the worst case in dollars? Can I undo it? Did I log it? If any answer is shaky, escalate to the client before acting.

So, can a freelancer approve their own changes? Within pre-agreed thresholds, yes. Outside them, no.

Scale Sign-Off to Risk and Write It Down First

Approval should scale with risk, be agreed in writing before work begins, and reserve client sign-off for spend, strategy, and brand claims. Everything else can run on pre-approved thresholds and an after-the-fact summary.

For your next client onboarding, draft a one-page change matrix: the changes you make most, the tier each belongs to, who approves, and how fast. Get the client to confirm it by email. It takes less than an hour and saves a lot of awkward conversations later.

And for the pre-approved weekly search terms cleanup, here is a way to make it faster. Optimize Google Ads Campaigns 10X Faster. Without Leaving Your Account. Keywordme lets you remove junk search terms, build high-intent keyword lists, and apply match types instantly, right inside Google Ads. No spreadsheets, no switching tabs, just quick, seamless optimization. Start your free 7-day trial (then just $12/month) and take your Google Ads game to the next level.