Google Ads – Disabling Account-Level Automated Assets

I’m sure by now some of you have seen those pesky, low-quality, automatically created site links, callouts and structured snippets appearing in your accounts courtesy of Google’s automatic assets.

Any well-managed account shouldn’t need to rely on these particular automated assets, as any competent manager will already have a decent set of well-structured assets in place.

I have also encountered an issue where incorrect images are being pulled into text ads, even though they do not exist as rich image assets in the account. After some investigation, it turns out the issue also stems from automated assets and is related to the Google Business Listing used in the location extension. Google can, by default, pull images from your business listing into your ads!

Buried within the Google Ads interface, there is a way to access all the dynamic asset creation settings and prevent these automatically created assets from appearing in your accounts.

Once logged into your account, navigate as follows:

Via the left navigation pane: 

1. Ads and Assets >>> Assets

Top right above columns:

2. More (three dots) >>> Account-level automated assets
3. More (three dots) >>> Advanced Settings.

This will present you with a full list of account-level automated assets.

• Dynamic sitelinks
• Dynamic callouts
• Dynamic structured snippets
• Seller ratings
• Longer ad headlines
• Automated apps
• Automated locations
• Dynamic images

From here, you can disable any automated assets that have been problematic.

To resolve the image issues I mentioned, under the ‘Automated locations’ dropdown, there is a checkbox ‘Allow Google Ads to use merchant photos’. This option also permits Google to use rich media assets from your Google Business Profile in the ads.

Clearly, you will need to weigh up the pros and cons of disabling each of these automated assets individually, depending on your account structure and goals.