Performance Max asset groups and their limits

The performance max asset requirements, asset group by asset group#

A Performance Max asset group is the creative den the whole campaign hunts from: one bundle of headlines, descriptions, images, logos and video that the system reassembles for Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Google's own definition keeps it simple, per Google Ads Help, 2026: a Performance Max asset group is made from the images, headlines, descriptions and videos you add when you build the campaign. The performance max asset requirements below are the exact floor and ceiling on that bundle, checked 11 August 2026.

Every asset group asks for a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 15 headlines at 30 characters each, a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 5 long headlines at 90 characters, and a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 5 descriptions at 90 characters, per Google Ads API asset requirements, 2026. The same specification carries a practical nudge worth following: Google recommends at least one headline of 15 characters or fewer, per Google Ads Help, text assets, 2026, so the shortest surfaces on Search still have something to show.

A performance max asset group in practice#

Treat a performance max asset group the way a fox treats a burrow: one entrance, many chambers. Feed it a genuinely distinct headline for every slot rather than fifteen near identical lines, because the diversity is what Ad Strength and the serving system are actually reading. The table below is the reference copy to keep beside you while you build; save it, because these are the performance max asset requirements every asset group inherits, whatever vertical you serve.

Images, logos, videos and the Editor 2.12 change to a performance max asset group#

The visual half of the performance max asset requirements runs on the same principle: minimums that keep an asset group eligible, maximums that give the system room to explore. An asset group takes up to 20 landscape marketing images and up to 20 square marketing images, each needing at least one uploaded, plus up to 5 logos when brand guidelines are switched off, per Google Ads API asset requirements, 2026. Optional portrait images and landscape logos add a further 20 slots each, so a fully stocked performance max asset group is a genuinely wide gallery, not a single square banner reused everywhere.

Video is where the performance max asset requirements moved most recently. Google Ads Editor version 2.12, released in March 2026, raised the video ceiling to up to 15 videos per asset group, up from the previous 5, giving advertisers far more creative options to test, per Google Ads Editor version 2.12 release notes, 2026. The same release added support for 9:16 tall portrait marketing images inside Performance Max asset groups, built specifically to reach vertical-first placements such as YouTube Shorts. Checked 11 August 2026, that raised ceiling is the live number: any older guide still quoting 5 videos per asset group is describing the den before the March 2026 remodel.

One more of the pmax asset limits catches international accounts out: character counting itself changes by language. In text assets, the length limits are the same across every language, but each character in a double-width language such as Korean, Japanese or Chinese counts as 2 towards the limit instead of 1, per Google Ads Help, text assets, 2026. A 30 character headline that reads comfortably in English effectively halves to about 15 characters once it is written in Japanese, so double check any translated asset group against the shorter real ceiling before you ship it.

Search themes and asset group signals inside a performance max asset group#

Performance Max is keywordless, so a performance max asset group leans on softer signals instead of exact match syntax. Search themes are the first of these: words and phrases that describe what a customer is likely to search for, giving Google's AI context your website, feed or existing assets may not surface on their own, per Google Ads Help, about search themes, 2026. Unlike a traditional keyword, a search theme is a broader hint, not a hard targeting parameter, and it does not restrict reach or narrow exploration on its own.

The ceiling on that hint doubled. Google increased the limit of how many search themes an advertiser can add from 25 to 50 per asset group, per Google Ads Help, Performance Max updates, 2026, letting a well stocked performance max asset group forage across a far wider thicket of related queries. Google's own best practice guidance is to avoid duplicates or close variants, since two overlapping themes teach the AI nothing new; write each one to cover incremental ground the others miss.

What asset group signals actually are#

Asset group signals sit one layer up from search themes. Formally, an AssetGroupSignal is a signal you can provide to Google to optimise ad serving at the asset group level, per Google Ads API, asset group signals, 2026. There are three types of asset group signals an asset group can carry: an audience, a search theme, and a local_services_id for the Local Services PMax variant. Performance Max uses whichever asset group signals you provide to prowl for new impressions with similar or stronger intent, tracking the scent of a likely conversion rather than matching a fixed string.

A worked example makes the distinction between search themes and hard targeting concrete. Say a Malta based outdoor brand builds a performance max asset group for hiking boots, and the landing page and feed already surface “waterproof hiking boots” and “walking boots Malta”. A search theme worth adding is something the page does not already say, such as “boots for the Blue Grotto trail” or “ankle support hiking gear”, because that is genuinely new scent for the AI to follow. Re-adding “hiking boots” as a fourth or fifth theme wastes a slot on ground the system already covers, which is exactly the duplicate pattern Google's own guidance warns against.

How many PMax campaigns per account, and the ceilings above your asset groups#

How many PMax campaigns per account can you actually run? The account wide ceiling is 100 Performance Max campaigns per account, confirmed on both the advertiser side and the API side, per Google Ads Help, account limits, 2026 and Google Ads API system limits, 2026. Above that sits a second ceiling: each of those campaigns can hold up to 100 asset groups, and each asset group can carry up to 1,000 listing group filters for retail product partitioning.

The account also caps the raw volume of assets sitting inside every ad group across your account, Performance Max included: 250,000 ad group level assets per account, separate from a 50,000 campaign level asset ceiling, per the same Google Ads Help account limits page, 2026. In practice almost no single advertiser forages anywhere near that number, but it is the true ceiling above every performance max asset group you build, alongside every ad group asset in every other campaign type in the account.

One structural quirk trips up anyone querying the Google Ads API by habit. Performance Max campaigns do not have standard AdGroup or AdGroupAd entities. Instead, they organise assets and targeting entirely through AssetGroup resources, so querying resources such as ad_group or ad_group_ad simply will not return any data for your Performance Max campaigns, per Google Ads API, Performance Max reporting, 2026. That is expected behaviour, not a broken query: switch the report to asset_group and asset_group_asset and the numbers reappear.

Building performance max asset requirements into your workflow without breaking them#

Retail asset groups add one more layer on top of every limit above: AssetGroupListingGroupFilter objects, the product partition tree that decides which products from your Merchant Center feed serve out of a given asset group. Listing group filters are not used to set bids, the way they are in standard Shopping campaigns, but rather to include or exclude a set of products, per Google Ads API, listing groups for retail, 2026. Every asset group in a retail Performance Max campaign needs a valid partition tree built from these filters before it can serve a single product.

The most common build mistake is trying to treat a performance max asset group like a spreadsheet row. In non-retail Performance Max campaigns, asset groups and their linked assets must be created together in a single bulk mutate request to meet the minimum asset requirements, per Google Ads API, Performance Max asset groups, 2026. An AssetGroup cannot be created alone through the AssetGroupService precisely because that minimum has to be satisfied at the same moment the asset group is born. A flat, one row per entity CSV cannot express that nested bundle, which is exactly why bulk uploads built for Search or Shopping tend to fail silently the first time someone points them at Performance Max.

None of this is exotic once you have built a handful of asset groups. The awkward part is almost always sequencing: build the text and image assets first, decide the video plan, attach signals, then check the account ceiling last, because that order matches how the bulk mutate request itself has to be assembled. Agencies running several client accounts should keep a running tally of Performance Max campaigns per client too, since the 100 campaign ceiling is per account, not per manager account, and it is easy to lose count once a client has run seasonal PMax campaigns for a couple of years without ever archiving the old ones.

Read together, that is the whole discipline behind the performance max asset requirements: a generous but genuinely finite creative den, a signal layer that tells the AI where to hunt, and an account ceiling that almost nobody hits but everybody should know. For the wider campaign picture, folkfox's Performance Max campaign guide covers structure and bidding, and the Google Ads hub holds the rest of the encyclopedia. If building and stocking asset groups at scale sounds like a chore best delegated, our PPC management service does exactly that.

Frequently asked questions#