Imagine this.

One day you decide to change marketing agencies, hire a new staff member, or simply log in to make a change to your Facebook or Instagram advertising.

Then you discover that nobody has access.

Unfortunately, this happens far more often than you'd think.

At Web Antler, we regularly spend time helping businesses recover Facebook pages, advertising accounts, Instagram profiles and tracking tools that have become disconnected, locked away in someone else's account, or simply forgotten over time.

The good news is that it's almost always preventable.

Think of Meta Business Manager as the filing cabinet

Meta Business Manager (now often called a Business Portfolio) is simply the place where all of your Facebook and Instagram business assets live.

Rather than individual people owning your assets, your business owns them.

Inside your Business Manager are things like:

Your Facebook Page
Your Instagram account
Your advertising accounts
Your Meta Pixel (website tracking)
Product catalogues
Audiences used for advertising

Think of Business Manager as the master key to your Meta presence.

If your business controls the Business Manager, it controls everything inside it.

Why this matters

When your business owns its Business Manager:

You can add or remove staff or agencies at any time.
You stay in control if employees leave.
You can change marketing agencies without rebuilding accounts.
Your advertising history, data and audiences remain yours.
Your business isn't dependent on one individual having access.

Without Business Manager ownership, your digital assets can effectively become attached to someone else's account—even if they're your own Facebook page or advertising account.

The most common issues we see

Over the years we've seen businesses where:

An old employee created the advertising account using their personal Facebook profile.
A previous agency owns the advertising account.
Nobody knows who the Business Manager administrator is.
The Facebook Page and Instagram account belong to different Business Managers.
Tracking pixels were created under someone else's account.
There are multiple Business Managers with different assets spread across them.

These situations aren't anyone's fault—they're simply the result of Meta evolving over many years.

What we recommend

Every business should:

✓ Have its own Meta Business Manager.

✓ Have at least two trusted administrators within the business.

✓ Ensure all Meta assets belong to that Business Manager.

✓ Grant agencies partner access rather than transferring ownership.

This keeps your business in control while still allowing your marketing team to do everything they need.

If things aren't set up correctly

Sometimes fixing ownership isn't as simple as clicking a button.

Recovering or reconnecting assets can involve:

Identifying where assets currently live.
Requesting ownership transfers.
Connecting or disconnecting Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Creating missing business assets.
Working with Meta Support to recover access.
Waiting for Meta approval processes to complete.

Because every situation is different, these investigations and recovery processes can take anywhere from a short session to several weeks, particularly when Meta Support is involved.

For this reason, any work required to investigate, recover, create or reconnect Meta assets falls outside normal campaign management and is treated as a separate project. We'll always discuss the scope with you before any work begins so there are no surprises.

Our recommendation

Even if you're not currently advertising, it's worth taking a few minutes to confirm that your business owns its Meta Business Manager and everything inside it.

It's one of those jobs that's easy to overlook—but it can save hours (or even days) of frustration in the future.

If you're unsure whether everything is set up correctly, we're happy to help you review your Meta account structure and identify any issues before they become a problem.

Request our handy checklist as a starting point to see if you have all of the accesses you need!