Google Ads campaign types

This page is for the marketer. It covers the Google Ads campaigns that reach people who are not searching: Display, Performance Max and Demand Gen, and the video they may need. Search campaigns, reports, budgets and everything the types share are on Google Ads.

What holds for all three:

• The campaign is always created paused. You enable it as its own request, once you have looked at it.
• Its ad groups, asset groups and ads start paused too, unless your administrator has switched that off. See What starts paused.
• The preview is checked by Google itself, without anything being created.
• Its budget is its own, held to Highest daily budget in Safety limits.
• Images come from your media library, and each is measured before anything is sent. An image at an address is added to the library first. See Media.

Display

A Display campaign shows image ads on websites, in apps and on YouTube. You build it in three requests: the campaign, an ad group with what it targets, and an ad.

Create a Display campaign "Retarget - KW" with 20 a day, in Kuwait, in Arabic and English, bidding for clicks.

The campaign needs at least one location and one language. Without them it would show everywhere, to everyone, so it is refused. Bidding is one of four: maximize conversions, target cost per conversion, maximize clicks, or manual bids.

The ad group is created together with what it targets: audiences, interests, websites and channels, topics, keywords. The ads show only to what you list.

• Each kind you list narrows the others (an audience and a topic); several of one kind widen it (this topic or that one).
• An ad group with nothing targeted is refused: it would show to everyone in the campaign's locations.
• The AI client shows you the whole list before you confirm, because that list is all that decides who sees the ads.

Optimized targeting

Optimized targeting lets Google show the ads to people and on places beyond your list, wherever it expects conversions. Your list becomes a hint, not a boundary. Google's own default is on. Here it is off unless you ask for it: the server switches it off as a second step right after the ad group is made, and the answer says whether it is on. If that step fails, the answer carries a warning: do not enable anything until it has been switched off.

The ad is a responsive display ad: Google assembles it from your texts and images into whatever size a page has room for. It needs:

What	How many
Short headlines, up to 30 characters	1 to 5
A long headline, up to 90 characters	1
Descriptions, up to 90 characters	1 to 5
Business name, up to 25 characters	1
Landscape images, 1.91:1, at least 600x314	at least 1
Square images, 1:1, at least 300x300	at least 1
Logos, square or 4:1	optional, up to 5

Google's image enhancements and its auto-generated video are not opted into.

Performance Max

Know what it is first

In a Performance Max campaign Google decides nearly everything: where the ads show (Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, Maps), who sees them, and how your texts, images and videos are combined. The server can hold it to the daily budget, the target, the locations and the languages, and to nothing else. Your AI client tells you this before you confirm.

Google takes a Performance Max campaign only whole: the campaign and its first asset group in one step. So the AI client asks you for all of it up front.

Create a Performance Max campaign for https://example.com/erp with 30 a day in Saudi Arabia, in Arabic. Ask me for everything you need.

The minimum assets

What	How many
Landing page	1
Business name, up to 25 characters	1
Headlines, up to 30 characters	3 to 15
Long headlines, up to 90 characters	1 to 5
Descriptions, up to 90 characters, one of them 60 or fewer	2 to 5
Landscape images, 1.91:1, at least 600x314	1 to 20
Square images, 1:1, at least 300x300	1 to 20
Logos, at least one square (at least 128x128)	1 to 5
Locations and languages	at least 1 of each
Portrait images, 4:5	optional, up to 20
YouTube videos	optional, up to 15

You are also asked one question the AI client may not answer for you: whether the campaign carries political advertising aimed at the European Union. Google requires the statement, and it is yours to make.

Bidding is maximize conversions (with an optional target cost per conversion, held to Highest target CPA) or maximize conversion value (with an optional target return). The budget is the campaign's own; Google does not let it be a shared one.

The automations are switched off

Google has several automations for Performance Max, most of them on by default. Here every one of them is switched off by name when the campaign is created:

• Google writing its own headlines and descriptions;
• sending clicks to pages other than your landing page (final URL expansion);
• retouching and cropping your images;
• taking images from your landing page;
• reworking your videos.

There is one way in. If you ask for final URL expansion, Google may send clicks to other pages of your site and write texts for them. Google ties the two together, so both go on, and the preview says so.

One thing has no switch: when you give no video, Google may make one from your images and texts. Nothing here can turn that off, and the AI client tells you.

Brand guidelines

Campaigns made here have Google's brand guidelines on. That makes your business name and logos the campaign's own, and holds everything Google assembles to that name and those logos. It cannot be changed after the campaign is created, and no colours or font are set.

So a further asset group in such a campaign needs no business name and no logo: it uses the campaign's.

Asset groups, signals and brand exclusions

A Performance Max campaign has asset groups where other campaigns have ad groups and ads. You can list them, add a further one (whole, like the first), rename one, change its landing page, pause or enable it, and add or unlink assets.

• To replace an asset, ask for the new one and the removal together. Both happen in one step, so the asset group never has fewer than Google requires. A removal that would leave it under a minimum is refused.
• An asset group cannot be removed from here. Pausing is its off switch.
• Enabling an asset group in an enabled campaign starts it showing and spending.

Signals are an audience (one saved in Google Ads) and search themes. They are hints to Google about who is likely to convert. They never limit who sees the ads.

A brand exclusion keeps the campaign off searches for certain brands, for example your own brand, so it does not take what a Search campaign already catches. Lifting one asks twice.

Negative keywords work for a Performance Max campaign as for any other.

Its reports

Show me the search terms of the Performance Max campaign for last month.

You can ask for a Performance Max campaign by asset group, by asset, by search term, by where it showed, or by channel. Two things to know: an asset's rows overlap, because every ad combines several assets, so they are not added up; and where it showed outside Search, Google gives impressions only. The ordinary search terms and ads reports have nothing for Performance Max.

Demand Gen

A Demand Gen campaign shows image and video ads on YouTube (in-stream, in-feed, Shorts), Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Display network. It is how a YouTube ad is made from here. You build it in three requests: the campaign, an ad group, an ad.

Create a Demand Gen campaign "Launch video" with a total budget of 600 from 1 to 30 November, bidding for clicks.

The campaign has a budget of its own: a daily one, or one total with a start and an end.

• A total is held to Highest daily budget times the number of days.
• Google refuses a Demand Gen budget under 5 US dollars a day or its equivalent. For an account in US dollars the server refuses it first; for another currency Google says it in the preview.
• You are asked whether it carries political advertising aimed at the European Union, as for Performance Max.

The ad group carries the locations and the languages, because this campaign type keeps them there. Both are required. It also carries:

• the channels: YouTube in-stream, YouTube in-feed, YouTube Shorts, Discover, Gmail, Display and Maps. Leave them out and all are on. For YouTube ads only, ask for the three YouTube ones;
• an audience, optional, one saved in Google Ads. Without one the ads show to everyone in those locations who uses those languages;
• optimized targeting, off unless you ask, exactly as for Display above.

The ad is one of three kinds:

Kind	Made of
Image	1 to 5 headlines, 1 to 5 descriptions, 1 to 5 logos, and up to 20 images, at least one of them landscape or square.
Carousel	One headline, one description, one logo, and 2 to 10 cards, each with its own image and headline.
Video	1 to 5 YouTube videos, 1 to 5 headlines, 1 to 5 long headlines, 1 to 5 descriptions and a logo.

Google's automations for the ad are all switched off: redesigned images, videos made from your images, shorter and vertical cuts of your video, and landing page previews. No request opts in.

A video ad names videos that are already on YouTube. It never uploads a file: that is its own step, below.

Uploading a video to YouTube

Google Ads shows a video only from YouTube. There are two cases.

The video is already on YouTube. Ask for it to be added to the account by its address. Google's check in the preview says whether the account may use it.

You have a video file. Add it to your media library, then ask for it to be uploaded.

Upload the product video from my library to YouTube for the Acme account, titled "Acme ERP in two minutes".

It stays on YouTube

Once uploaded, the video is on YouTube, outside this server, for good. Nothing here can take it back, and anyone who has its link can watch it. Your AI client asks you before uploading and tells you where it will be.

• Where it lands. On a YouTube channel that Google manages for the Google Ads account, which is not your own channel and does not appear in your YouTube Studio. Or on your own channel, if you give its id and it is linked to the Google Ads account.
• It is uploaded unlisted. It does not appear in search or on the channel. It is seen in ads and by whoever has the link. The server never uploads a public video.
• The preview sends nothing. A file cannot be checked without sending it, so this preview is the server's own check and Google has not seen the video.
• It may take a while. After the upload the server waits up to three minutes for YouTube to process the video. If that takes longer, the answer says so and gives you something to ask about later. Do not ask for the same file to be uploaded again: it may already be there.

The video then goes into a Performance Max asset group or a Demand Gen video ad.

Video campaigns

Google does not let a Video campaign be created or changed through its API. So no request can make one here, and asking for one gets that answer, with what to use: a Demand Gen campaign with a video ad, on the YouTube channels only.

I want a YouTube campaign for our launch video.

Your AI client will explain this and offer Demand Gen.