Advertising & Paid Media
Asset groups
Also known as: Performance Max asset groups
An asset group is the creative container inside a Google Performance Max or Demand Gen campaign, holding headlines, descriptions, images, logos, videos and audience signals. Google assembles ads from these assets and serves them across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Retail campaigns can tie an asset group to a specific set of products through listing groups.
What it is
Asset groups replace the ad group as the unit of creative organisation in automated Google campaigns. Each group is a pool of interchangeable text, image and video assets that the system mixes into formats for each placement. You can run several asset groups in one campaign, each with its own creative, landing page and product selection.
Why it matters
Because Performance Max hides much of the targeting, asset groups are one of the few structural levers advertisers still control. How you split them determines which creative appears alongside which products or services, and how cleanly you can read performance. Poorly structured groups blur results and make it hard to know what to fix.
How it works
Practitioners usually build one asset group per meaningful theme, such as a product category, service line, margin tier or audience intent, then supply the full range of asset sizes and lengths so every placement can be filled. Asset performance labels, asset group level reporting and the search themes and search category insights guide which creative to replace. Landing pages and product feeds are matched to the group so the message and the destination agree.
When it applies
It applies to any Performance Max or Demand Gen build, and matters most when a single campaign covers several distinct offers, price points or buying motivations.
Examples
- A retailer runs separate asset groups for winter coats and hiking boots, each linked to its own listing group and landing page.
- A B2B software firm splits one asset group for free trial sign-ups and another for enterprise demo requests, with different videos and copy.
- A hotel group uses one asset group per city, with local imagery and a city landing page in each.
How it is measured
- Conversions and cost per conversion at asset group level
- ROAS or lead quality by asset group and linked listing group
- Proportion of assets rated Good or Best, and coverage of every required size and format
- Impression or spend share by asset group against expected demand
Insights on Asset groups
Related terms in Advertising & Paid Media
- AI-generated creativeAI-generated creative is ad and marketing creative produced or adapted using generative models, including images, video, voiceover, headlines and body copy. Teams use it to produce more variants, localise faster and test concepts that would be too costly to shoot. It still needs human direction, brand review and legal checks before it runs.
- Brand safetyBrand safety is the practice of preventing advertising and brand content from appearing next to material that could damage reputation, such as violent, illegal or misleading content. Brand suitability is the related, narrower idea of matching placements to a specific brand's tolerance and values rather than a universal baseline. Both rely on exclusion lists, content classification and verification reporting.
- ChatGPT AdsChatGPT Ads refers to advertising placements inside OpenAI's ChatGPT. OpenAI has publicly signalled that advertising is part of its commercial plans and has been testing and building out ad capabilities, so the format details continue to change. For marketers it represents a possible new paid surface alongside organic visibility in AI assistants.
- ChatGPT Sponsored AgentsChatGPT Sponsored Agents is the name given to a paid placement format in which a brand's agent or assistant can be surfaced inside a ChatGPT conversation to help complete a task, such as booking, quoting or buying. It sits alongside other advertising formats OpenAI has discussed for ChatGPT, where commercial results are marked as sponsored rather than blended invisibly into answers. Availability, naming and mechanics are still moving, so treat any specification as provisional and check current OpenAI documentation before planning spend.
- Conversational advertisingConversational advertising is paid placement inside a dialogue, whether that is an AI assistant, a chatbot, a messaging app or a voice interface. Instead of a static creative next to content, the ad appears as a response, suggestion or handover at the point where the user has expressed intent. The defining features are turn-by-turn context, a disclosure label, and the option for the user to keep talking rather than click away.
- Demand Gen campaignsDemand Gen is a Google Ads campaign type built for visually led prospecting across YouTube, Discover, Gmail and other Google feeds. Advertisers supply image, video and text assets plus audience signals, and Google's systems assemble and place ads to create interest before someone actively searches. It replaced Discovery campaigns and sits between upper funnel video and lower funnel search or shopping activity.
Primary research · August 2026
How ChatGPT Shortlists Software Brands
An audit across 10 categories and 60 buying questions. I recorded what ChatGPT reads, throws away and links to when a buyer asks it which software to buy, and what that decides.
- 60
- Questions asked
- 10
- Software markets
- 2,680
- Results read
- 367
- Links shown
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