Agency ad account

Platforms such as Meta, TikTok and Google work with agencies and authorised resellers that open accounts on behalf of advertisers. The agency is invoiced by the platform and then bills the advertiser, usually adding a fee quoted as a percentage of ad spend.

Arbitrage operators use agency accounts for practical reasons: invoicing in place of card payments, higher daily spending limits, a named contact who can ask the platform why an ad was rejected, and sometimes a credit line that eases the cash-flow float between paying for traffic and being paid by the feed.

They are not a shield. The platform's ad policies apply exactly as they do to a self-serve account, and an agency can lose its own standing if clients misbehave, so reputable ones vet what you run. Be wary of sellers who market rented accounts as "ban-proof": using accounts to get around enforcement breaks platform terms and tends to end with frozen balances. Count the fee as a real cost when working out break-even point.

An example

Say an agency charges 4% on spend. A click that costs $0.200 really costs $0.208, so a campaign earning $0.205 per click is losing money, not making it.