Performance Max Asset Groups: Creative Specs for 2026

Almost every Performance Max article tells you what the campaign type is, why it eats your Search budget, or how to stop it wasting money. Very few tell you what to actually hand the designer. That is the gap this page fills: file sizes, ratios, counts, and the production decisions that decide whether an asset group serves everywhere or nowhere.

It matters more than it sounds. Performance Max asset groups are the only creative container in the campaign. There is no ad-level control, no placement picker, no size-by-size upload as in the old Display days. What you put in the group is the entire instruction set. If the portrait slot is empty, the Discover placement is simply not available to you, and no amount of budget fixes it. ZenWeb audits enough Malaysian SME accounts to know how common that is.

Before the specs table, here is a walkthrough of the asset types and their formats.

1. What an Asset Group Controls, and What It Does Not

Quick Answer: An asset group is a themed bundle of images, videos, logos, headlines and descriptions plus one final URL. Google assembles ads from it for every surface the campaign can reach. It controls the creative and the landing page. It does not control budget, bidding, or which placement gets shown.

Think of it as the ingredient list, not the recipe. You supply parts; the system builds a Search ad, a Display banner, a YouTube in-feed unit and a Discover card from the same pile. That is why a missing ratio is not cosmetic — it removes a whole format from the build. Google's own explanation of how asset groups work describes them as sets of creative assets grouped by a common theme or audience.

Budget, bid strategy and conversion goals stay at campaign level, which is why value-based bidding in Google Ads and the creative decisions on this page are separate jobs. If the campaign type itself is still fuzzy, what Performance Max actually is is the shorter read, and our Google Ads management covers where it sits in a full account.

Three things sit inside the group and nowhere else:

• The final URL. One per asset group. Two landing pages means two asset groups, which is the cleanest reason to split.
• The creative pool. Up to 20 images across the three ratios, 5 logos, 5 videos, 15 headlines, 5 long headlines and 5 descriptions.
• The audience signal. A hint, not a target. It speeds up learning; it does not fence off who sees the ads.

Key takeaway: The asset group is your only creative lever in Performance Max. Whatever you leave out of it is a placement you have quietly opted out of.

2. The Minimum Servable Set vs the Set That Actually Serves

Quick Answer: The minimum to publish is one landscape image, one square image, one square logo, three headlines, one long headline and two descriptions. That set will serve. It will mostly serve on Search and standard Display, because every other surface needs a ratio or a video the minimum does not contain.

Google lets the campaign go live on the floor, and the interface says nothing is wrong. Ad Strength shows "Poor" or "Average", which reads like a nudge rather than a hard limit. It is closer to a hard limit than most advertisers assume. A missing ratio is missing inventory, not a scoring penalty you can ignore.

The practical difference between floor and working set:

• Floor. Two images, one logo, minimal text. Serves. Reaches Search plus a narrow band of Display.
• Working set. Three landscape, three square, two portrait, both logo shapes, one video per orientation, eleven or more headlines. Reaches everything the campaign is entitled to.
• The gap between them costs nothing but production time. No extra media spend is involved — you are unlocking inventory you are already paying to compete for.

This is also why so many rescue jobs start here rather than in the bidding tab. When a campaign underdelivers, the honest first question is whether it was ever equipped to deliver. Performance Max not working and Performance Max producing no conversions both list creative starvation among the first checks, and a full Google Ads audit would flag it inside ten minutes.

Key takeaway: "Servable" and "competitive" are different thresholds. The campaign will run on two images; it will not reach YouTube, Shorts or Discover on them.

3. Image, Video and Text Specs to Give Your Designer

Quick Answer: Three image ratios carry the whole campaign: landscape 1.91:1 at 1200 × 628, square 1:1 at 1200 × 1200, and portrait 4:5 at 960 × 1200. PNG or JPEG, under 5,120 KB each. Video needs a minimum of 10 seconds, ideally uploaded in horizontal, square and vertical.

The table below is the one to paste into a design brief. Counts are per asset group, and the recommended column is what earns a strong Ad Strength rather than the bare eligibility floor set out in Google's Performance Max specs and format requirements.

Ratio, pixel dimensions, minimum count and recommended count for every Performance Max asset type in an asset group.

Asset Type	Ratio / Limit	Recommended Size	Minimum	Ship This Many
Landscape image	1.91:1	1200 × 628 px	1	3–4
Square image	1:1	1200 × 1200 px	1	3–4
Portrait image	4:5	960 × 1200 px	0	2
Square logo	1:1	1200 × 1200 px	1	1
Landscape logo	4:1	1200 × 300 px	0	1
Video	10 sec minimum	1920×1080, 1080×1080, 1080×1920	0	3
Headlines	30 characters	Text	3	11–15
Long headlines	90 characters	Text	1	4–5
Descriptions	90 characters	One must be 60 or fewer	2	4–5

Source: compiled from Google Ads Help specification pages, September 2026, with recommended counts from ZenWeb client tracking, Malaysia, 2024–2026. Licence.

Two production rules save the most rework. Images are PNG or JPEG and must stay under 5,120 KB, so a designer exporting print-quality JPEGs will hit the wall on the square. And Google crops from the centre — keep the logo, the face and the price inside the middle 80% of every frame, or the portrait crop will cut them. Budget for the design time honestly; our graphic design pricing guide for Malaysia gives the going rates, and writing a proper creative brief is what keeps it to one round.

Key takeaway: Three ratios, two logo shapes, three videos, eleven headlines. Hand that list to the designer once and you never rebuild an asset group in a panic.

4. The Portrait Gap in Malaysian Asset Groups

Quick Answer: Portrait 4:5 is the most-skipped asset in Malaysian SME accounts, because it is optional at setup and nothing in the interface insists. Skipping it removes Discover and most vertical mobile inventory from the campaign, which is where a mobile-first market spends its attention.

The pattern is consistent across audits: landscape and square get produced because the setup flow blocks you without them, and everything optional gets postponed. Portrait is optional. Video is optional. The landscape logo is optional. All three are the assets that open the surfaces Malaysian buyers actually scroll.

Share of audited Malaysian SME Performance Max asset groups supplying each asset type, with the surface unlocked by each.

Asset Supplied	Share of Asset Groups	%	What It Unlocks
3+ landscape images		71	Search, Display, Gmail
3+ square images		64	Display, Maps, YouTube in-feed
Any uploaded video		34	YouTube in-stream and in-feed
Any portrait 4:5 image		29	Discover, vertical mobile
11+ headlines		22	Combination testing headroom
Landscape 4:1 logo		18	Wide banner slots
Video in all 3 orientations		7	Shorts and vertical YouTube

Source: ZenWeb client sample, Malaysian SME Performance Max accounts, 2024–2026. Licence.

Seven in a hundred asset groups can serve a vertical video. The rest are competing for Shorts inventory they cannot fill.

The portrait fix is genuinely cheap: one designer re-crops the existing square hero to 960 × 1200 with the subject repositioned, twice, and the gap closes in an afternoon. It is the same discipline that makes YouTube Shorts ads in Malaysia work at all, and the reason creative testing only becomes meaningful once every slot is filled.

Key takeaway: Optional assets get skipped, and the optional ones are the mobile ones. Portrait 4:5 and a vertical video are the two highest-return afternoons in most Malaysian accounts.

5. Video: Upload Your Own, or Accept the One Google Builds

Quick Answer: If you upload no video, Google generates one from your images and text and runs it on your budget. It is serviceable and it is nobody's brand guideline. A 12-second uploaded clip in three orientations replaces it and usually outperforms it, because a real product beats a slideshow.

Google is explicit that videos may be auto-created when an asset group has none, and documents the behaviour under auto-generated video ads. Separately, Performance Max video automation can reshape videos you did upload into vertical or shorter cuts. The first is a substitute for missing work. The second is a multiplier on work you have done.

What to hand over, in order of value:

• Horizontal 16:9, 1920 × 1080. The workhorse. In-stream YouTube and most desktop placements pull from it.
• Vertical 9:16, 1080 × 1920. Shorts and vertical feed. Without it your Shorts eligibility is theoretical.
• Square 1:1, 1080 × 1080. In-feed and Discover video slots. Cheapest to produce, usually a re-cut of the horizontal.

Keep the first two seconds carrying the offer, because the skip decision happens there. Videos are hosted on YouTube — you upload to a channel, public or unlisted, and Google Ads references it. Unlisted works, but an unlisted video cannot earn organic views, so a business already investing in YouTube ads in Malaysia or in video marketing generally gains by making them public. If you are weighing generated assets against produced ones more broadly, whether AI-generated Google Ads assets convert covers the trade-off, and getting more from PMax with AI sets the wider context.

Key takeaway: You are getting video either way. The only question is whether it is yours. Three orientations of a 12-second clip settles it permanently.

6. Where Your Ads Actually Show, by Asset Completeness

Quick Answer: A minimum asset group spends roughly seven ringgit in ten on Search and standard Display. Add portrait and three videos and the same budget spreads across YouTube, Discover and Gmail, which changes who sees the ads rather than just how many.

The table indexes where impressions land at four levels of completeness. Each row totals 100% of that asset group's impressions, so read it as a distribution, not a volume.

Percentage share of impressions by Google surface at four levels of Performance Max asset group completeness.

Asset Group Level	Search & Shopping	Display	YouTube	Discover & Gmail
Minimum set only	71	21	4	4
All three ratios, no video	58	27	6	9
Ratios plus one landscape video	46	24	19	11
Full set, three video orientations	38	21	27	14

Source: ZenWeb operational data, Malaysian SME campaigns under management, 2024–2026. Rows total 100% of each asset group's impressions. Licence.

Read the Search column downwards and the point becomes uncomfortable: a minimum asset group is largely a Search campaign wearing a Performance Max badge, which is exactly why Performance Max cannibalising Search happens so often. Feeding the group properly is the least disruptive way to push it off the terms your Search campaigns already own. For feed-driven accounts the same logic applies to the product data, which is why Google Merchant Center setup deserves the same attention.

Key takeaway: Creative completeness is a placement control in disguise. The assets you supply decide where the budget can go, long before bidding gets a say.

7. One Theme per Asset Group: How to Build It

Quick Answer: One asset group equals one offer, one landing page and one visual story. Mixing two services into a single group produces ads that pair the wrong headline with the wrong photo, and the reporting cannot tell you which half failed.

How to build a Performance Max asset group around one theme

Plan half a day per group. The build itself takes twenty minutes; the decisions before it take the rest.

1. Pick the theme from the landing page, not the product list. If two offers share one page they share one asset group. If they have separate pages, they need separate groups.
2. Write eleven headlines against that one offer. Vary the angle, not the wording. Price, speed, guarantee, location and proof are five different angles; five ways to say "quality service" are one.
3. Shoot or select three images per ratio from the same visual family. Same lighting, same treatment, same subject class. Mixed styles read as two brands once Google recombines them.
4. Export the three ratios from one master file. Reposition the subject for the 4:5 crop rather than letting the export do it. This is the step that fixes the portrait gap for good.
5. Upload one video per orientation to YouTube first. Twelve seconds, offer in the first two, brand at the end. Then reference each in the asset group.
6. Set the audience signal to your own customer data. A customer list or converters segment starts the learning faster than an interest bundle.
7. Check the final URL resolves, then check it again after any site change. A 404 behind a healthy-looking asset group burns budget for days.

Naming matters more than it should, because reporting is at group level. Name each group after its offer and city where relevant, so a report row is readable without opening it. The same discipline that makes responsive search ads testable applies here, and the destination still has to do its job — landing page fixes for Google Ads is the companion piece. Hiring for the production side instead? Google Ads for recruitment uses these same asset rules on job-title campaigns.

Key takeaway: One offer, one URL, one visual family per asset group. Anything broader and the reporting stops telling you which creative earned the sale.

8. What Changes in the Eight Weeks After You Fill the Gaps

Quick Answer: Impressions move first because new inventory opens immediately. Conversions lag by two to three weeks while the new surfaces learn, and cost per conversion usually dips below baseline around week four. Judging the change at week two shows you cost without the return.

The table indexes three numbers with the 30 days before the asset upload set at 100. It is the shape to expect, not a promise, and it assumes budget and bidding were left alone.

Indexed impressions, conversions and cost per conversion by week after completing a Performance Max asset group, baseline 100.

Metric (Index)	Wk 1	Wk 2	Wk 3	Wk 4	Wk 6	Wk 8
Impressions	108	121	133	141	152	158
Conversions	99	104	112	118	126	131
Cost per conversion	103	101	97	94	91	89

Source: ZenWeb-managed campaigns, Malaysia, 2024–2026. Baseline 100 = 30 days before the asset upload. Licence.

Week one is the awkward one: impressions up 8%, conversions slightly down, cost per conversion up 3%. New surfaces convert worse than familiar ones until the system learns them. By week eight the account is buying 31% more conversions at 11% less each, on the same budget. If your numbers move the other way after week four, the assets are not the problem — check the landing page and the offer, the way the honest PMax review for SMEs lays it out.

Key takeaway: Reach responds in days, conversions in weeks. Give a completed asset set eight weeks before you judge it, and change nothing else in that window.

9. Conclusion: Specs Are the Cheap Half of the Job

Quick Answer: Three image ratios, two logo shapes, three video orientations, eleven headlines, one offer per group. That list costs a designer a day and unlocks inventory you are already bidding for. Everything harder in Performance Max sits on top of it.

Performance Max asset groups reward completeness more reliably than cleverness. A plain photo set covering every ratio beats an award-winning landscape image with nothing beside it, because the second one can only appear in a quarter of the places your budget could go.

Start with the group spending the most. Fill the portrait slot, upload three video orientations, take the headlines from three to eleven, and leave the budget and bidding untouched for eight weeks. If the value line moves the way the table above shows, do the next group. That sequencing is how our Google Ads team works through an inherited account.

Two things to settle alongside it. Wider Display placements follow the same asset logic, so Google Display ads in Malaysia and the Display Network explained are worth reading together. And the logo you are uploading in two shapes has to survive both crops, which is a question for logo design before it is a question for ads.

10. Frequently Asked Questions

1. What image sizes do Performance Max asset groups need?

Three ratios: landscape 1.91:1 at 1200 × 628 pixels, square 1:1 at 1200 × 1200, and portrait 4:5 at 960 × 1200. Files are PNG or JPEG and must stay under 5,120 KB each. One landscape and one square are the minimum to publish; three of each plus two portraits is what reaches every placement.

2. How many asset groups should one campaign have?

One per offer and landing page. A Malaysian SME with three services and three service pages wants three asset groups, not one mixed group. More groups than distinct offers splits the data thinly; fewer groups than offers produces ads that pair the wrong image with the wrong headline.

3. Do I have to upload a video to a Performance Max asset group?

No, but you get one regardless. If no video is supplied, Google may auto-generate one from your images and text and run it on your budget. Uploading a 12-second clip in horizontal, square and vertical replaces the generated version and gives you control of what viewers see.

4. Why is my Ad Strength still "Average" after adding more images?

Ad Strength weighs text and video as heavily as images. Most accounts stuck on Average are short on headlines or have no uploaded video. Take headlines to eleven with genuinely different angles, add long headlines to four, and upload one video per orientation before adding a tenth image.

5. Can I control which placements a Performance Max asset group shows on?

Not directly. There is no placement picker in Performance Max. The assets you supply are the closest thing to a control: no portrait image means little vertical mobile inventory, no video means almost no YouTube. Asset completeness shapes the placement mix more than any setting does.