In short: in PMax you don't choose networks, keywords or placements: your only levers are asset groups and signals. An asset group is one message for one audience, with a matching landing page — four to six per campaign at most. And signals teach, they don't limit: they start from your own data. Without URL exclusions, the click ends up wherever Google wants.
In PMax you don't choose networks, keywords or placements. What you do build —and what decides the quality of what Google will do with your money— are the asset groups and the signals. This lesson treats them as what they are: the campaign's only creative and steering lever.
What is an asset group in PMax?
A set of texts (up to 15 headlines, 5 long headlines, 5 descriptions), images (several aspect ratios), logos, videos (if you don't supply them, Google generates one from your images), sitelinks and other assets, a final URL and some audience signals. Google composes ads for each network out of them (text on Search, banners on Display, video on YouTube, cards on Discover/Gmail). A campaign can have several groups; each one is, in practice, "a message for an audience".
How do you structure asset groups?
| Criterion | When |
|---|---|
| By product / service family | Ecommerce and catalogues: one group per category with its product listing (if there is a feed) and its creatives |
| By intent / audience | Lead generation: "urgency", "comparison", "existing customers" with different messages |
| By stage | Prospecting (no signals from your data) versus recovery (your lists as the signal) |
| By language or market | If one campaign covers several |
The rule: every group must have creatives and a landing page coherent with its audience; if two groups share message and landing page, they are one. And no more than 4-6 per campaign: each group splits the learning.
Which creatives does Performance Max need?
- Images: landscape, square and portrait, clean, without text, high resolution; product or person as the protagonist; several per group.
- Video: even a simple vertical one. The video generated by Google (images with transitions and text) is functional but generic; your own 15-second video beats it almost every time.
- Texts: with the formula from module 4 of the Basic level (keyword, benefit, proof, action), bearing in mind they will appear on Search and as visual cards.
- Assets: sitelinks, call, prices, promotions — PMax uses them on Search.
Review the automatically created assets: Google generates headlines and descriptions from your landing page and may show them; in the campaign settings you can turn off the automatic text assets if you don't want messages you haven't approved.
What are audience signals in PMax?
Signals are the algorithm's starting point, not targeting: Google uses them to find similar people and then goes further. Good signals:
- Your data: buyers, qualified leads, high-value visitors (the lists from module 7 of the Intermediate level). The most powerful signal.
- Custom segments built with your core keywords: "people who searched for X".
- In-market segments for your category.
- Demographics only as support.
Bad signals: "everybody" (it teaches nothing) and signals from audiences that don't convert (they teach the opposite of what you want).
What is final URL expansion and how do you control it?
With final URL expansion switched on (the default), PMax can send the click to any page on your website it considers relevant to the search, and generate headlines for it. It is useful in large catalogues; dangerous when it sends traffic to the blog, to "work with us" or to pages with no conversion. Two controls:
- URL exclusions (by URL or by pattern): blog, legal, careers, user account, out-of-stock pages.
- Turning expansion off in lead-generation campaigns with a single landing page: the click always goes to your page.
What does the PMax asset report show?
Each group shows its assets with a label (Low / Good / Best) and the group's Ad strength. It is the equivalent of the asset report for RSAs (module 4 of the Intermediate level) and you work it the same way: replace the "Low" ones that have volume with new angles, one or two per round, without rebuilding the group. In PMax, on top of that, each asset is judged by its performance across all networks at once: an image rated "Low" can be good on Display and bad on Discover; there is no more detail than that, and you have to live with it.
💡 Ninja trick: asset groups are the one part of PMax where the Search tools transfer across unchanged: RSA Optimizer works on their texts with the same file and memory, and well-built remarketing lists (cart, buyers, qualified leads) are the signals that teach the algorithm fastest. What PMax hides in the spend split, it partly makes up for by being given good material.
What you should remember
- Asset group = a message for an audience, with coherent creatives and landing page; 4-6 per campaign at most.
- Clean images in every aspect ratio, your own video, texts with a formula; review the automatically created assets.
- Signals = your data and custom segments from your core; they teach, they don't limit.
- URL exclusions (or turning expansion off) so the click goes where it should.
- Asset report: work the "Low" pieces just as you do with RSAs.