About assets

In this article

• What are assets (formerly "extensions")?
• Available asset types
• How assets work
• Costs
• How to select assets to use

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What are assets (formerly "extensions")?

Assets (formerly "extensions") are content pieces that add useful business information to your ad - giving people more more reasons to choose your business. Assets include the headlines, descriptions, links to specific parts of your website, call buttons, location information, and more that come together to make up the eventual ad format that is shown to a user. 

This article covers what each asset type does and how to pick the right assets for you. 

There are two ways to add assets to your ad or ad groups:

• (Google Ads only) When you create a Search or Performance Max campaign, you can add assets as part of the process.
  • Create a Search campaign 
  • Create a Performance Max campaign
• You can add assets to already existing accounts, campaigns, or ad groups. Not all assets can be associated at all entity levels. Learn more.

How assets work

To maximize the performance of your text ads,  the advertising platform selects which assets to show in response to each individual search. For that reason, it’s a good idea to use all the assets relevant to your business goals.

By adding more content to your ad, assets give your ad greater visibility and prominence on the search results page. That means you tend to get more value from your ad. Assets often increase your total number of clicks, and can give people additional, interactive ways of reaching you—as with maps or calls.

Many asset types require a bit of set-up—those are manual. Some assets are added automatically when the advertising platform predicts they’ll improve your performance—those are automated. No setup is typically required for automated assets, so they don’t show up among the options when you’re creating manual assets. Learn more about automated assets: 

• Google Ads Help Center
• Microsoft Advertising Help Center

Adding an asset doesn't guarantee that it will show with your ad all the time. Assets show with your ad when:

• The asset (or combination of assets) is predicted to improve your performance.
• (Google Ads only) Your ad’s position and Ad Rank is high enough for assets to show. To show assets, a minimum Ad Rank is required. Learn more about when assets show.

Cost

There's no cost to add additional assets to your campaign. Clicks on any asset in the final ad - on the headline, sitelink, image, and more - will be charged by the advertising platform as usual (the exception is clicks on seller ratings - Google Ads only - which are not charged). So you’re charged a click when someone calls you from a call icon on your final ad or when someone downloads your app by clicking on the app rendered on your final ad. Google Ads charges no more than two clicks per impression for each ad and its assets. Learn more about actual cost-per-click (Google Ads and Yahoo! JAPAN Ads) or pay-per-click (Microsoft Advertising):

• Google Ads Help Center
• Microsoft Help Center
• Yahoo! JAPAN Ads Help Center

How to select assets to use

Keep these best practices in mind as you choose and set up your assets:

• Use every asset relevant to your business—assets are free to add and they’ll show only if they’re predicted to improve your ad's performance.
• (Google Ads) Consider adding 4 or more asset types. For example, you could add sitelinks, callouts, images, and one additional asset of your choice.
• If it makes sense for your business, create assets at higher account levels (for example, at the account or campaign level, when available).

Learn more about Learn more about selecting asset types