An asset group is made from the images, logos, headlines, descriptions, videos and audience signals that you add when you create your Performance Max campaign. These assets are automatically mixed and matched based on which Google Ads channel (YouTube, Gmail, Search and others) your ad is being served on. You can use the ad preview editor to check possible creative asset combinations.
Google may automatically create assets to help connect you to potential customers. When this setting is turned on, Google uses AI to generate additional assets (headlines and descriptions) to be used in combination with the assets you input. These new assets are based on your landing page, domain and existing ads and creative assets. It’s recommended that you keep this setting turned on to optimise campaign performance. Learn more about automatically created assets in Performance Max campaigns.
Performance Max ads can serve on:
- Discovery feed
- Gmail
- Google Display Network
- Google Search
- Shorts feed on mobile devices
- YouTube
Note: Advertisers with a Merchant Center feed don’t need to supply any additional creative assets to launch a Performance Max campaign. However, we do recommend that you provide creative assets to allow your campaign to serve maximally across surfaces and have optimal performance. Ads may be auto-generated on your behalf when possible. Note that automatically created assets aren’t available for Shopping ads.
Bear in mind
An asset provided in an asset group can be combined with any other asset from the same group to create ads that serve across Google Search, Google Maps, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discovery feeds and Google partner websites. Advertisers can create multiple asset groups per campaign after their initial asset group is created and the campaign is launched.
Instructions
Add assets
Start your asset group by adding headlines, images and videos related to a single theme or audience. Performance Max will automatically assemble these assets into all applicable ad formats for your goal and show the most relevant ad creatives in each ad.
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Add an asset group name to identify your asset group theme. Though you can only set up one asset group before publishing your campaign, you can add additional asset groups later.
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Your ads will be directed to the Final URL. If final URL expansion is turned on, additional URLs on your domain will serve when relevant.
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Add text, images, videos and assets to your asset group by following the requirements below:
Note: If Final URL expansion is on, Google may replace your Final URL with a more relevant landing page based on the user’s search query, and generate a dynamic headline, description and additional assets to match your landing page content. Learn more about automatically created assets.
Text specification
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Text asset type |
Requirements |
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Final URL |
Add 1 final URL |
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Headline |
30 characters max. Include at least one with 15 characters or less |
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Add up to 15 headlines |
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Long headline |
90 characters max. |
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Add up to 5 long headlines |
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Description |
90 characters max. Include at least 1 with 30 characters or less |
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Add up to 4 descriptions |
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Business name |
25 characters max. |
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Add 1 business name |
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Call-to-action |
Automated by default or select from a list |
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Add 1 call-to-action |
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Display URL path |
15 characters max. for each |
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Add up to 2 display URL paths |
Image specification
In addition to the requirements outlined in the table below, all image assets must meet the following:
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Saved as a JPG or PNG file
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Maximum file size of 5120KB
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Content needs to be in the middle 80% of the image (the safe area that won’t be cut off, despite the device screen size)
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Image asset type |
Requirements |
|---|---|
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Landscape image 1:91:1 |
Recommendation: Add 4 landscape images 1200px x 628px in size |
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Minimum dimensions: 600px x 314px |
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Maximum total images: 20 |
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Further supported for serving on image search mode only |
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Square image 1:1 |
Recommendation: Add 4 square images 1200px x 1200px in size |
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Minimum dimensions: 300px x 300px |
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Maximum total images: 20 |
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Images that do not meet this aspect ratio can be uploaded and cropped within the interface. |
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Portrait image 4:5 |
Recommendation: Add 2 portrait images 960px x 1200px in size |
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Minimum dimensions: 480px x 600px |
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Maximum total images: 20 |
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Square logo 1:1 |
Recommendation: Add 1 square logo 1200px x 1200px in size |
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Minimum dimensions: 128px x 128px |
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Maximum total logos: 5 |
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Landscape logo 4:5 |
Recommendation: Add 1 landscape logo 1200px x 300px in size |
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Minimum dimensions: 512px x 128px |
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Maximum total logos: 5 |
You can use images with overlays, but it's recommended to use at least one image without any for each aspect ratio (square, landscape and portrait). Here are some examples:
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Images without text or graphic overlays |
Images with text or graphic overlays |
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Video specifications
Tip: Google automatically resizes your video ads to increase your performance by platform and improve ad strength. If you don’t plan to upload a video, consider how your other creative assets will appear if resized.
Video ads are critical to the success of your campaign and can increase your campaign performance. If you’ve included at least one video in your Performance Max campaigns, you may be eligible to run on additional video inventory.
Performance Max campaigns must have at least one video that’s longer than 10 seconds. You can upload a maximum of 5 videos. We recommend having at least one landscape, square and vertical video.
If you don’t add a video to your Performance Max asset group, one or more videos may be auto-generated from the assets in your asset group and may appear in a horizontal or vertical format.
Google AI may also flip your uploaded videos to transform horizontal videos into square or vertical versions so they may serve on YouTube Shorts.
Each video is reviewed before publishing to ensure that there are no issues, such as cropped text or logos, poor focus, loss of the original message and aesthetic intent from the video or legal disclaimer cut off. Flip video ads serve only when the source video’s privacy settings are either public or unlisted.
When your Flip video ad is added to the campaign, you can view it by visiting your Performance Max asset group or video action campaign.
Want to build your own video?
If you don’t have a video asset and don’t want to use the auto-generated videos, you can use the Google Ads video creation tool to create a video for use in your Performance Max campaign. Advertisers may also upload a YouTube Shorts-eligible video (vertical format, between 10–60 seconds in length). To learn how to create videos in Google Ads, see how to create a video using asset library.
Google may automatically resize your video ads to increase your performance by platform and improve ad strength. After you’ve created and uploaded your creative assets, landscape videos may be scaled to square (1:1) or portrait (9:16) aspect ratios for YouTube in-stream and YouTube Shorts. Google will review each video to ensure that quality isn’t lost.
Performance Max ads specifications can be found in the chart below.
| Recommended | Can also accept | Callouts | |
| Resolution |
1080p (Full HD) Recommended pixels (px) for HD:
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720p (Standard HD) Minimum px:
Minimum px for SD:
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For optimal quality, we don’t recommend using SD |
| Aspect ratio |
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For optimal quality, we don’t recommend using SD |
| Format | .MPG (MPEG-2 or MPEG-4) | .WMV, .AVI, .MOV and .FLV .MPEG-1, .MP4, .MPEGPS, 3GPP, WebM, DNxHR, ProRes, CineForm and HEVC (h265) | Can’t accept audio files like MP3, WAV or PCM files on YouTube |
| File size | ≤256 GB | - | - |
| Ad length |
Video orientations and best practice ad lengths
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- | We recommend having at least one vertical video between 10–60 seconds long to be eligible for Shorts |
Assets
- It's recommended to add assets to your Performance Max campaign to give people viewing your ads additional information about your business, and more reason to take action. Learn more About assets.
- You can add location, affiliate location, callout, call, sitelink, structured snippet, lead form and price assets in Performance Max campaigns, depending on your business and campaign goal. Learn more about selecting which asset to use.
Ad creative best practices
- Refresh your creative assets because they're your most powerful tools to drive performance and allow you to customise the campaign to promote new products, menu items or sales.
- For weekend sales, start the campaign 2–3 weeks in advance, then refresh your assets frequently to move from more generic shop assets to sales-focused assets. This practice allows you to do time-based promotions without compromising performance.
- Add at least 7 image assets, including one of the format 1200 x 1200.
- Don’t delete the assets with 'low' ratings without replacing them with new ones.
- Add more assets as your marketing message evolves or add new assets to continue to capture additional users.
- The more assets, the better. More assets means more ad combinations that we can serve across networks to maximise performance.
- Select a call to action that aligns with your goals such as 'Sign up' or 'Subscribe'.
- Add your business or brand name that appears in the text of your ad.
- Click the dropdown for more options and add the URL options as required.
Use custom labels from page feeds
Page feed custom labels allow you to specify which URLs from your page feed will be included in ads generated from each asset group. Follow the instructions below to use customs labels for your Performance Max campaign asset groups.
Bear in mind, the instructions below occur in the middle of Create a Performance Max campaign.
- This setting will only appear if you already have page feeds set up in your account. Learn more about how to use page feeds in Performance Max.
- There is a limit of 100 page feeds per account.
- When you add your assets, click More options to expand the section.
- In the 'Custom labels' section, click the Add a custom label field.
- Add a custom label based on your existing page feed.
- Select Add, then continue to add as many custom labels from your page feed as you’d like.
Audience signals
Audience signals allow you to add audience suggestions that help Google AI optimise for your selected goals. Although adding audience signals is optional, using them can help you guide machine learning models on the ideal way to optimise your campaign.
Add audience signals
In the 'Audiences' section beneath your asset group:
- If you have already created audiences, choose Select an audience. If not, choose Create an audience.
- Create a unique name for your audience.
- Add your data.
- Add custom segments.
- Choose Save audience.
Audience signal inputs
How they’ve interacted with your business
You can leverage first-party customer and marketing data that you already have from desktop and mobile visitors, page and social views and past converters.
Try adding data from these sources:
- Website visitor lists
- App user lists
- Customer lists (for example, email and subscription lists)
- Video viewer lists
Learn more about your data segments.
Your custom audience segments
Custom audience segments help you to reach your ideal audience by using relevant keywords, URLs or apps that you add. Add the keywords or phrases that represent your targeted audience. Use URLs from websites that are similar to your website. Enter the names of apps that your ideal customer is likely to use.
Learn more about custom segments.
Demographics
When you use 'Demographics', you can narrow the focus of your custom audience segment by using certain identifiers to focus your campaign on specific qualities of your audience.
Additional audience segments
Add other segments to reach people based on who they are, their interests and habits and what they’re actively researching. These signals help you reach the right audience at the right time.
Try adding targets from these areas:
- Detailed demographics: Reach user groups based on long-term life facts.
- Life events: Reach user groups when they are in the midst of important life milestones.
- Affinity: Reach user groups based on what they're passionate about and their habits and interests.
- In-market: Reach user groups based on their recent purchase intent.
Asset groups best practices
- Use the Ad strength indicator to determine if an asset group has enough assets to drive best performance.
- Ensure that all asset types (text, images and videos) are covered in every asset group.
- Ensure your assets meet quality guidelines.
- Create variations of assets to find the top-performing creative.
- After you edit your assets, wait for a few days for your ad strength and asset group status to be updated. We recommend waiting 2–3 weeks before deciding to replace low performing assets.
- Add as many assets as possible, including up to 15 headlines, 5 descriptions, 20 images in different orientations and 5 videos in different orientations. Refer to the table below for more information:
Text assets
| Type | Quantity | Required | |
| Headlines |
3–15 headlines Recommended: 11 |
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| Long headline |
1–5 long headlines Recommended: 2 |
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| Descriptions |
1–5 descriptions Recommended: 4 |
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| Business name | One name | ||
| Call to action | One call to action | ||
| Final URL | One URL |
Image assets
| Ratio | Quantity | Required | |
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Landscape 1.91:1 |
1–20 images Recommended: 4 |
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Square 1:1 |
1–20 images Recommended: 4 |
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Logo 1:1 |
1–5 images Recommended: One |
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Logo 4:1 |
1–5 images Recommended: One |
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Portrait 4:5 |
1–20 images Recommended: 2 |
Video assets
| Ratio | Quantity | Required | |
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Landscape 16:9 |
1–5 videos Recommended: One |
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Square 1:1 |
1–5 videos Recommended: One |
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Vertical 9:16 |
1–5 videos Recommended: One |
Here's an example of how asset groups can be used:
Create multiple asset groups within the same campaign to group assets that should serve in sets or themes. Separating asset groups by content category, theme, language or target audience is recommended. You may also want to create multiple asset groups if certain assets are more relevant to specific audiences.
Asset report
The asset report lists each asset used in a Performance Max campaign and allows you to compare performance across a variety of assets. You’ll need to set up a Performance Max campaign to view your asset report. Learn more About asset reporting in Performance Max.
