Gemini models are coming to Performance Max

Performance Max campaigns serve across all of Google’s ad inventory, unlocking more opportunities for you to connect with customers. It’s important to have a wide variety of creative assets that meet the needs of different customers and formats. Great creative drives results — we found that advertisers who improve their Performance Max Ad Strength to “Excellent” see 6% more conversions on average.¹

Today, we’re announcing several new features to help you scale and build high-quality assets — including bringing Gemini models into Performance Max.

Expanded access and improvements to generative AI in Performance Max

AI innovation is delivering powerful results for our advertisers. It’s helping them create more effective campaigns and build creative assets at the volume, velocity and variation required to engage consumers in relevant ways. Marketers and agency partners remain at the heart of the creative process, using a deep understanding of their customers and business to guide AI with the right inputs to build meaningful creative that performs.

In Performance Max, we announced the launch of AI-powered asset generation and image editing in November. These help you generate more text and image assets for your campaign in just a few clicks. Asset generation is now rolling out globally in English with more languages to come. Image editing will finish rolling out in the U.S. in March, with global English expansion following shortly after.

We’re also improving these asset generation capabilities with Gemini, Google's most capable AI model. Performance Max can now generate long headlines and sitelink generation is coming soon; both of these new features will use the Gemini model's sophisticated reasoning capabilities to generate text assets.

Soon, when we upgrade our image generation models to Imagen 2, adapted for Google Ads, you’ll be able to generate lifestyle imagery using Performance Max that shows people in action. Similarly, image editing will also include the ability to generate and add backgrounds that feature people. And if you have existing images that are performing well? You’ll be able to generate new options similar to them to scale your creative ideas even further. Of course, advertisers remain in full control and will be able to review all images suggested for their campaigns. And we don’t allow the generation of images of named people, including celebrities and public figures.

In addition, advertisers cannot use Performance Max or asset generation to create content that promotes violence, misrepresentation, or any other content prohibited by our long-standing Google Ads policies and generative AI usage guidelines. We also use mechanisms such as watermarking with SynthID that allow images to be identified as AI-generated. Imagen2 and SynthID are technologies developed by Google DeepMind.

We will continue to improve these new generation capabilities for advertisers in accordance with our AI Principles and practices to continue innovating responsibly.

Better Ad Strength and more ways to help you create engaging assets

With so many ways to build new assets, how do you know you’re hitting the mark? Ad Strength is an indicator to give you real-time feedback on asset variety and relevance. Generative AI is making it easier than ever to improve your asset mix. In fact, advertisers that use asset generation when creating a Performance Max campaign are 63% more likely to publish a campaign with Good or Excellent Ad Strength.²

Moving forward, asset quantity and variety will be more heavily weighted in determining Ad Strength for Performance Max campaigns. This reflects their importance in helping you get the most out of the diverse inventory and formats available across Google channels.

Here are three key ways to improve your asset variety:

1. Apply new recommendations to add more assets: These asset suggestions will be sourced from your website, asset library and stock images. In a few weeks, we’ll start recommending new AI-generated assets, including adapted versions of your existing assets (e.g. an existing square image being expanded to landscape using generative AI).
2. Bring in creative assets from other design platforms: We’re growing our partnerships, starting with Canva. If you start your design or creative process in Canva, an upcoming Canva integration app will make it easier to publish images directly into your Performance Max campaign. Canva is home to the world’s largest library of designer-made content, and soon, they’ll add templates tailored for Performance Max to make sure you meet the creative specs needed to maximize asset variety.
3. Add videos: Whether you upload a video or let Google auto-generate one for you, this simple addition has a big impact: Advertisers that include at least one video in their Performance Max campaigns see an average increase of 12% total additional conversions.³ Last year, Performance Max started using images from Google Merchant Center product feeds to create better auto-generated videos that help retailers convert shoppers browsing on YouTube, including YouTube Shorts. This is now expanding to all eligible campaigns and text will also be sourced from automatically created assets (if you're opted in) to help improve the quality and relevance of your auto-generated video. Check asset group details to see what videos Google AI is helping you create and use video creation tools if you’d rather build and upload your own video.

Better collaboration with ad previews

The creative process is a partnership between many different teams. Next month, we’re introducing the ability to share previews of your ads from Performance Max via a link that can be reviewed by anyone — even if they don’t have a Google Ads login or security credentials. These previews can be accessed when you view or edit your asset group. They’ll simplify creative workflows and make it easier for agencies or in-house marketing teams to share concepts.

Your creative assets are key ingredients in your Performance Max campaigns. Asset variety and quality both contribute to your campaign success. Want to learn more about how to improve your creative with the AI Essentials? Check out our creative guide and this tutorial video on asset generation. And if you want to learn more about Performance Max, we’re answering your top questions here.