If you don't choose queries, placements or audiences… what is left to decide who your campaign talks to? The creatives. A thirty-second vertical video showing gameplay attracts someone different from an image with a promotion. In apps, the creative brief is the targeting document.
The inventory: fill every slot
Each surface (Search, Play, YouTube, Display, Discover) accepts specific formats. If you are missing them, you don't compete there. Public guidance recommends filling every available slot: on the order of up to ten text assets, twenty images and twenty videos per asset group — plus playable HTML5 for games — with a healthy minimum well above what most advertisers upload (several text assets, more than ten images and a handful of videos).
Above all, variety of aspect ratios:
- Video: landscape (16:9), portrait (9:16) and square (1:1), with
varying lengths — short 10-15 second pieces and something longer up to
- Image: landscape, square and portrait.
- Text: headlines and descriptions that work standalone, because they are combined with each other and with images without you pairing them.
Video deserves a special mention: without video, YouTube — one of the highest-volume surfaces — is essentially out of your reach. If you have no video, Google itself can generate one from your listing, but a video made for your audience performs far better.
What to say in each piece
A script that works in apps: the problem in the first three seconds, the app solving it (real interface footage), some proof (a rating, a number, a testimonial) and a clear call to action. Speak the user's language, not your product roadmap's: you don't sell features, you sell the moment their problem disappears.
Four angles worth keeping alive at all times, one per asset group: the problem, the demo, social proof and the offer or what's new. That way, when one wears out, three others are still learning.
How to read the asset reports
The system rates each asset by comparing it with the others in the group (the public scale is of the low / good / best kind) and there is an ad strength indicator that mostly measures whether your inventory is diverse enough. Two keys to not misreading it:
- It is a relative rating: a "low" asset isn't bad in absolute terms; it is worse than its peers. Replace the best ones and every label changes.
- It needs volume to mean anything: don't judge a video on four days and a hundred impressions.
The refresh routine
- Cadence: refresh in batches every few weeks, not everything at once — a mass asset change resets the group's learning.
- Replace, don't hoard: retire consistently "low" assets and put new pieces in their place, keeping the inventory full.
- Change one variable at a time (the hook, the format, the length) if you want to learn anything from the comparison.
- Rescue the winners: a video that works spawns three variants (different length, different ratio, different ending).
💡 Ninja trick: creative fatigue in apps shows up sooner in the cost per install rising at the same volume than in CTR. When CPI climbs two weeks running without you changing anything, your creatives have usually run out of road.
⚠️ Pitfall: uploading five versions of the same video with a bigger logo. To the system they are the same piece: it learns nothing new and you pay to find that out. Variety means different angles, not tweaks.
What you should remember
- Without varied creatives there is no targeting and no surfaces: fill every format and ratio.
- No video, no YouTube. Several formats, far more reach.
- Ratings are relative and need volume.
- Refresh in batches, replacing, one variable at a time.