Create video variants

On the Variants page, you can edit the swappable elements of a video project to create different variants with different assets.

If you're planning to customize variants according to rules, you can then assign variants to rules to determine when to serve each variant. You can also skip the Variants page, and create and customize variants directly on the Rules page. Or, create video variants offline with spreadsheets.

Viewing modes

You have two options for viewing the Variants page:

• Grid view – The grid view is more visual and lets you focus on one variant at a time. A preview of the currently selected variant is shown on the right, while all variants are listed in the left-hand pane.
• Table view – The table view allows you to make bulk edits more easily. Each variant is displayed as a row in a table, with a column for each swappable element.

To switch between views, use the buttons in the upper right corner of the Variants page.

Create a variant

Create your first variant by clicking New variant. Tailor the variant by adding assets or entering text content for swappable elements.

Add assets

Customize each swappable element according to its type:

• Text  – Enter the text to display.
• Image  – Drag a supported file type from your computer and drop it on Drop file here or click Browse to select an image from the asset library.
• Video  – Drag a supported file type from your computer and drop it on Drop file here or click Browse to select a video from the asset library.
• Audio  – Drag a supported file type from your computer and drop it on Drop file here or click Browse to select an audio file from the asset library.
• Color  – Enter a hexadecimal color value (for example, #ffffff for white), then choose an opacity from 0–100%. Zero opacity is invisible, 50% is see-through, and 100% is fully visible. You can select values in increments of 10.
• Voice-over  – Enter the text to speak, then select the language, speaking speed, voice, and style. Click listen  to hear the voice-over.

If you want to adjust other element properties such as font, scaling, volume, or ducking, you need to edit the template. Those property changes will apply to all variants in this project.

Rename the variant

You should give each variant a meaningful name to help distinguish it from other variants.

In grid view:

1. Place your cursor over the variant name. Click the Edit option that appears.
2. Enter a new variant name.
3. Click Apply.

In table view:

1. Next to the variant name, click Edit .
2. Enter a new variant name.
3. Click Apply.

About video names for Google Ads projects

The variant name will be used as the video name on YouTube unless you edit it there. By default, videos uploaded to a YouTube channel through Ads Creative Studio are unlisted and not visible on the channel.

Preview

In grid view, once you've added assets for the swappable elements in a variant, a preview video is shown. You can play the preview using the video player controls at the bottom of the video.

If you've recently created or made changes to a variant, the preview video may show as blank. Press Play to begin processing the video, which may take several minutes.

If you see the message "Video isn't available," make sure that you've added assets for all swappable elements and saved the video project.

If you don't start your video processing on the Variants page, you can also start it on the Rules and Review pages.

Create additional variants

Add more variants and customize them for other groups of people or contexts.

• To create a new variant with default values for the swappable elements, click New variant.
• To make a duplicate of an existing variant, select the variant you want to copy, then click Make a copy in grid view, or Copy in table view.
  • You can select multiple variants to duplicate by using Shift+click to select a range, or Ctrl+click (Windows)/⌘+click (Mac) to add individual variants to the selection.

If rules have already been set up for this project, you may want to check that you've created the appropriate variants to assign to each row in the rules table. You can also create and edit variants directly on the Rules page.

Variant limits

You can create up to 250 variants in video projects. This is the limit for Campaign Manager 360. For Google Ads projects, contact support to increase the limit to 1,000.

Delete variants

If you create a variant that you don't need, you can select it then click Delete.

Next steps

• If you plan to use different variants for different contexts or audiences and haven't set up rules so yet, you should go to the Rules page.
• Otherwise, you can review your project.