An asset group is made from the images, logos, headlines, descriptions, videos and audience signals you add when you create your Google Ads Performance Max campaign. These assets are automatically mixed and matched based on which Google Ad 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.
For advertisers with a Merchant Center feed, you don’t need to supply any additional creative assets to launch a Performance Max campaign. However, Google recommends 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.
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, Discover feed 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.
- 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.
- Add text, images and videos to your asset group by following the requirements below:
Text specifications
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Image specifications
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5120 KB maximum file size Further supported for serving on image search mode only |
5120 KB maximum file size Note: Images that do not meet this aspect ratio can be uploaded and cropped within the interface. |
5120 KB maximum file size For campaigns with Shop Visits only |
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5120 KB maximum file size |
5120 KB maximum file size |
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Legend:
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| File formats: JPG or PNG |
Minimum resolution: |
5120 KB maximum |
Recommended image safe area: |
Video specifications
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Videos longer than 10 seconds are required for all Performance Max Campaigns If you do not upload a video, one may be generated for you from other creative
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If you don’t add a video to your Performance Max asset group, then one or more videos may be auto-generated from the assets in your asset group. Auto-generated videos may be auto-generated in longer, standard YouTube form or in a vertical format so that they may serve on YouTube Shorts. 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, less than 10-60 seconds in length), which may be eligible to serve on YouTube Shorts. To learn how to create videos in Google Ads, visit 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 Instream and YouTube shorts. Google will review each video to ensure that quality isn’t lost, however if you have an issue with the resizing please contact Google support to help you opt out of this service.
Ad creative best practices
- Refresh your creative assets, as they're your most powerful tools to drive performance, and they allow you to customise the campaign to promote new products, menu items or sales.
- For weekend sales, start the campaign 2 to 3 weeks in advance, then frequently refresh your assets to move from more generic shop assets to sales-focused assets. This allows you to produce time-based promotions without compromising performance.
- Add at least seven image assets, including one in 1200x1200 format.
- Don’t delete assets with 'low' ratings without replacing them with new ones.
- Add more assets as your marketing message evolves or new assets to continue to capture additional users.
- The more assets, the better. More assets means more ad combinations Google can serve across networks to maximise performance.
If you don’t add a video to your Performance Max asset group, then one or more videos may be auto-generated from the assets in your asset group.
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. Learn how to create videos in Google Ads using asset library.Add signals
Performance Max uses audience signals like age, gender, location, browsing history and search keywords to show ads to the right people. Signals in your Performance Max campaign help Google’s algorithm to run the ad in the right direction. It can show ads that are more likely to be seen and engaged with by the right people, leading to improved results overall.
About search themes
Search themes in Performance Max allow you to provide Google AI with information about what your customers are searching for. This helps Performance Max campaigns to serve on placements that may not be obvious to AI, but where they expect good results. Learn more about search themes in Performance Max campaigns.
Add your data
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.
Additional signals
Audience signals
Audience signals allow you to add audience suggestions that help Google Ads automation optimise for your selected goals. Although adding audience signals is optional, using audience signals can help you guide machine learning models on the ideal way to optimise your campaign.
How to add audience signals
In the 'Audience signal' section beneath your asset group:
- Click Add an audience signal.
- If you have already created audiences, search for the audience that you want to choose on the 'Select an Audience' page. If not, click + New Audience.
- On the 'New audience signal' page, create a unique name for your audience, then add your custom segments, data and interests and demographics.
- Click Save.
Interests and detailed demographics
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’re 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.
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.
More options
HTML5
If you've created an HTML5 ad using a different tool, such as Google Web Designer, you can upload it to Ads Creative Studio as a display project. Find more information about creating HTML5 assets.
Requirements
- Your HTML5 ad should be packaged in a single ZIP file.
- Creatives that expand to other sizes are not supported.
- All ad clickthroughs must use either the Enabler or click tags. Hard-coded clickthroughs using HTML anchor tags are not supported.
- HTML5 assets in interstitial dimensions (320x480 and 480x320) can be up to 5.2 MB in file size. Larger assets will be immediately rejected, so reduce your asset’s file size as needed.
Display path
Display path gives people an idea of where they'll arrive after they click an ad. The landing page that you define with a final URL tends to be more specific. For example, if your display path is www.example.com, your final URL might be example.com/shoes. Google Ads uses the domain from your final URL combined with your path text, if any is entered, to create the display path.
Your path text doesn’t have to match the exact text of your final URL, but it should help the user understand what to expect from your landing page. Each path can have up to 15 characters and you can add up to 2 display URL paths.
Final URL for mobile
Final URL for mobile helps you maintain different landing pages for mobile users. Final URL for mobile is the page on your mobile website that people reach when they click your ad. It doesn’t have to be the same as your display path, but the domains (for example, the 'example.com' in 'www.example.com') must match.
Select the 'Use a different final URL for mobile' box and enter the final URL for mobile. It should contain any URL parameters that your site uses to determine the content of a page or for tracking purposes.
Create a new rule to target specific webpages
URL contains
You can target pages with URLs that contain a certain piece of text, called a token. In a URL, a token is surrounded by a limiter like “/”, “-” among others.
Example
You want to target all the services-related pages of your electronics website based on the URL string that appears when you navigate the site. If all of those URLs follow a similar pattern, like electronicsexample.com/services/, you should target every one that contains 'services', using rules. You can create rules using the following logic:
URL rules
Create URL rules or specify which URLs from page feeds to use for your ads.
To target all pages with ‘Services’ in the URL:
- URL contains Services
To target all pages with ‘Services’ and ‘Quotes’ in the URL:
- URL contains Services AND URL contains Quotes
Keep in mind that it won’t work for URLs like electronicsexample.com/servicesmenu/, because it has the word 'menu' after the targeted text. However it will work for electronicsexample.com/services-menu/ because the '-' is a separator. Other separators include ‘:’ ‘/’ ‘?’ ‘+’ and ‘&’.
Instructions
To target pages with URLs that contain a certain piece of text, follow these steps:
- Sign in to your new Search Ads 360.
- Navigate to a Google Ads client account.
- While creating your Performance Max campaign, navigate to the 'Asset group' page.
- Scroll down and click 'More options'.
- On the 'URL rules' card, click + URL rules.
- Select Create URL rules as a preferred option.
- Add the text that you want the URL to include in the 'Add URL rule' bar.
- You can add one or more text combinations by clicking And after adding each piece of text.
- Click Add to add the new rule.
- Click Apply.