Ad Strength shows you how well an ad follows our asset coverage best practices for optimal performance. It can be found in the ad creation editor and in the asset report. A higher Ad Strength will help to maximise the performance of your ad. Improve your Ad Strength by adding more assets and diverse content.
Ad Strength has three components: the overall rating, a specific next step that can improve the strength of the ad, and progress indicators by the type of asset (headline, text, images and videos). The ratings can range from 'Incomplete' to 'Excellent'.
On this page
- The benefits of Ad Strength
- How to use Ad Strength during ad creation
- How to use Ad Strength to improve the performance of existing ads
- How to use Ad Strength to understand the impact of asset updates
The benefits of Ad Strength
Demand Gen ads work best when you use many different creative assets and aspect ratios. This helps the system to try out various ad combinations to show the most fitting ad to each person. By making Ad Strength match all the different creative options and making it easier to create these assets, we help you to get more views and engagement.
Also, as well as following the Ad Strength tips, make sure that all your uploaded creative assets meet the YouTube and Discover feed ad requirements so that your ads get approved. For more help on creating engaging ads that perform well, check out our detailed creative best practices.
How to use Ad Strength during ad creation
The Ad Strength overall rating of 'Average', 'Good' or 'Excellent' will change depending on your actions during ad creation and editing. You'll find the 'Incomplete' rating if you don't include the minimum requirements for an ad.
- To achieve a 'Good' Ad Strength score, your assets must meet the full coverage requirements, including all three aspect ratios: horizontal, square and vertical formats for both videos and images. This change ensures that your ads are eligible to serve across a wider range of placements, including Shorts.
- For video ads, you can also attain a 'Good' score by uploading a horizontal video and opting into video enhancements. This allows Google to automatically generate square and vertical video formats from your single horizontal video, simplifying the process of meeting full coverage and expanding your reach.
- A 'Vertical' image can be satisfied with either a 4:5 or 9:16 aspect ratio.
- An 'Excellent' score signifies full optimisation, requiring three of each format.
The rating will change as you progress through ad creation and follow the best practices in the UI. If you go through all of the steps indicated in the Ad Strength progress menu (next to the ad rating) and add a variety of strong assets, your ad rating will be 'Excellent'.
How to use Ad Strength to improve the performance of existing ads
For ads that you're ready to edit, you can click through Ad Strength prompts to see which actions you can take to improve ad performance by adding assets. To achieve the highest score for your ads, these are the current guidelines.
| Ad type | Average | Good | Excellent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Image |
Image assets:
Text and other assets:
|
Image assets:
Text and other assets:
|
Image assets:
Text and other assets:
|
| Video |
Video assets:
Text and other assets:
|
Video assets:
Text and other assets:
|
Video assets:
Text and other assets:
|
| Carousel | Card and image assets:
Note that images shouldn't be duplicated and aspect ratios should be consistent. |
Card and image assets:
Note that images shouldn't be duplicated and aspect ratios should be consistent. |
Card and image assets:
|
How to use Ad Strength to understand the impact of asset updates
You can use the Ad Strength bar in your asset report to learn how editing assets can impact Ad Strength and performance. An alert will appear on the Ad Strength bar if the asset update impacts Ad Strength negatively.
