Google Ads turns on Performance Max sourced videos by default

Google Ads has made sourced videos the default in Performance Max. Google's help page for the feature now says it is enabled for all new campaigns, and that advertisers who find it switched on in campaigns they never touched may be seeing the result of “a recent platform update”.

The setting has started appearing in accounts over the past few days as a tick box labelled New under Asset optimisation, with the description “Use videos from other channels”. Advertisers who track Google's help documents say the earlier version of the page described an opt-in. The current version does not.

For an Australian business running Performance Max, the practical change is this: unless someone opens the campaign and unticks the box, Google AI can look for video on your campaign's landing page, social accounts and linked YouTube channel, from the sources approved in the campaign, and run what it finds as ads.

Existing campaigns already opted in

Sourced videos is a campaign-level setting. Google describes it as using Google AI and “automated video crawling technology” to find relevant videos from sources you approve and add them to your Performance Max campaigns, so you skip selecting, formatting and uploading video yourself.

Two sentences in the help page matter more than the rest. The first says sourced videos are enabled by default for all new campaigns. The second says that if the setting is on in an account where nobody switched it on, Google may have turned it on automatically in some existing campaigns through a recent platform update.

That second sentence is the reason to check campaigns that have been running for months, not just new ones. The help page does not say which existing campaigns were affected, or when.

The page also says you need to approve the sources from your video portfolio before Google can use them. How that squares with a default-on setting in an existing campaign is not spelled out, so treat the Manage sources list as something to inspect rather than assume.

Expect up to 10 crawled videos per asset group from socials and YouTube

Google lists three kinds of source: social media platforms, the campaign's landing page and a linked YouTube channel. Its system chooses videos on relevance to the campaign, performance potential and what Google calls best practice adherence, with aspect ratio given as the example.

Up to 10 crawled videos can be added to an asset group automatically. They sit alongside any videos you uploaded yourself and any made with Google's video generation tools, so an asset group that had two deliberate videos could end up with twelve.

The selection is not a one-off. Google says videos in the campaign are refreshed on a recurring basis to keep ads “fresh and competitive on video inventory”. If a video is deleted from its original home, such as your YouTube channel, Google says it is removed from Google Ads automatically.

Think about what that means in practice. A behind-the-scenes clip posted to Instagram eighteen months ago, a product walkthrough embedded on a landing page, a vertical reel shot for a different audience: all of these could be candidates if their source is approved. None of them were made as paid ads, and none of them went past whoever signs off on ad creative.

Ads serve from a Google-owned YouTube channel, not yours

Every video in a Performance Max campaign has to live on a YouTube channel to serve. Sourced videos are uploaded to what Google calls a dedicated Google-owned YouTube channel, branded with your logo and business name, that sends all viewers to your landing page.

So the public sees your brand on a channel you do not own or administer. For a business that keeps its YouTube presence tidy, or one in a regulated category where creative goes through compliance, that is the detail to raise internally.

The upside Google offers is time saved and fuller coverage of video placements. Performance Max serves on YouTube whether or not you hand it video, and the help page lists videos made with Google's video generation tools as another way asset groups get filled. Sourced videos add your actual footage to that mix, which many advertisers will prefer to generated clips. The question is whether you want to choose the footage or let the system do it.

Video is also expensive to get right. In our review of video ads for lead generation, $1.2M of Google Ads video spend over nine years produced leads at $567 each, 4.4 times the account average. Adding more video to a campaign does not automatically add leads, which is why sourced clips deserve the same scrutiny as anything you would upload on purpose.

$5 USD daily budget minimum

Google says the feature is rolling out in sequences and may not be available in every account yet. The only stated requirement is a Performance Max daily budget above $5 USD, which rules out almost nobody.

One small trap: the Landing page images option that sits near Sourced videos also carries a New label in some accounts, even though advertisers have had that option since at least March this year. The video setting is the one that changed.

Performance Max has had a busy month of control changes. Google's help centre now documents Smart Bidding Exploration for Performance Max, which lowers Target ROAS by a tolerance of 5% to 30% when it is on. Sourced videos is another case of Google widening what the campaign can do on its own, and in this instance it is on by default rather than offered.

Sourced videos tick box lives in the Asset optimisation drop down

The path Google gives is short. Open Campaigns, select the gear icon next to a Performance Max campaign, find the Asset group section and open the Asset optimisation drop down. The Sourced videos tick box is there. Tick or untick it, select Manage sources to review and approve the URLs Google may crawl, then Apply and save the campaign. New campaigns show the same option during setup.

Three outcomes are reasonable, depending on the business:

• Leave it on, but open Manage sources and remove any URL or channel you would not want Google pulling clips from, such as a personal social account or an old landing page.
• Leave it on and audit what it picks. Under Assets in the Campaigns menu, sourced videos appear in the asset list of each Performance Max campaign with performance data like any other asset, so you can see which clips are running and remove the sources that produce the wrong ones.
• Turn it off, which is the right call if ad creative needs sign-off before it runs, or if you would rather not have a Google-owned channel carrying your brand.

Whichever you choose, make the decision deliberately. In our Performance Max cost per lead comparison, one account produced leads at $114 for Performance Max against $126 for Search across $32M of lifetime spend, and the long-standing complaint about the campaign type is opacity rather than results. A setting that adds creative you did not pick, from sources you did not nominate, is opacity of a new kind. Open each Performance Max campaign, look at the box, and write down what you decided and why.