Gemini AI Integrates with Google's Performance Max for Enhanced Campaigns

Performance Max campaigns run across all of Google's advertising inventory, creating more opportunities for you to reach customers. Having a diverse set of creative assets is essential to meet the needs of different customers and ad formats. High-quality creative drives performance — we found that advertisers who improve their Performance Max Ad Strength to "Excellent" achieve 6% more conversions on average.¹

Today, we're introducing several new features to help you scale and produce high-quality assets, including integrating Gemini models into Performance Max.

Expanded access and improvements to generative AI in Performance Max

AI innovation is delivering strong results for our advertisers, enabling them to create more effective campaigns and produce creative assets at the volume, speed, and variety needed to engage consumers in relevant ways. Marketers and agency partners remain central to the creative process, using their deep understanding of customers and business goals to guide AI with the right inputs and create impactful creative that performs.

In November, we launched AI-powered asset generation and image editing in Performance Max, allowing you to generate additional text and image assets for your campaigns with just a few clicks. Asset generation is now rolling out globally in English, with more languages coming soon. Image editing will complete its rollout in the U.S. in March, followed by a global expansion in English shortly after.

We're also enhancing these asset generation capabilities with Gemini, Google's most advanced AI model. Performance Max can now generate long headlines, and sitelink generation is coming soon; both features leverage Gemini's sophisticated reasoning to produce high-quality text assets.

Soon, when we upgrade our image generation models to Imagen 2, optimized for Google Ads, you'll be able to create lifestyle imagery in Performance Max that shows people in action. Similarly, image editing will include the ability to generate and add backgrounds featuring people. If you already have high-performing images, you'll be able to generate similar new options to further scale your creative ideas. Advertisers retain full control and can review all images suggested for their campaigns. We do not allow generating images of named individuals, including celebrities and public figures.

Additionally, advertisers cannot use Performance Max or asset generation to create content that promotes violence, misrepresentation, or any other content prohibited by our longstanding Google Ads policies and generative AI usage guidelines. We also use mechanisms like SynthID watermarking to identify AI-generated images. Imagen 2 and SynthID are technologies developed by Google DeepMind.

We will continue to improve these new generation capabilities for advertisers in line with our AI Principles and practices to ensure responsible innovation.

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

With many options for creating new assets, how do you know you're on the right track? Ad Strength provides real-time feedback on asset variety and relevance. Generative AI makes it easier than ever to enhance your asset mix. In fact, advertisers who use asset generation when setting up a Performance Max campaign are 63% more likely to launch a campaign with Good or Excellent Ad Strength.²

Going forward, asset quantity and variety will carry more weight in determining Ad Strength for Performance Max campaigns. This reflects their importance in helping you maximize the value of the diverse inventory and formats available across Google channels.

Here are three key ways to boost your asset variety:

1. Apply new recommendations to add more assets: These asset suggestions will come 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., expanding a square image to landscape using generative AI).
2. Incorporate creative assets from other design platforms: We're expanding our partnerships, starting with Canva. If you begin 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 hosts the world's largest library of designer-made content, and soon they'll add templates tailored for Performance Max to help you meet creative specifications and maximize asset variety.
3. Add videos: Whether you upload a video or let Google auto-generate one for you, this simple step has a significant impact. Advertisers who include at least one video in their Performance Max campaigns see an average increase of 12% in total additional conversions.³ Last year, Performance Max began 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 opted in) to improve the quality and relevance of auto-generated videos. Check asset group details to see what videos Google AI is creating for you, and use video creation tools if you prefer to build and upload your own video.