Google Ads now uses AI to add promotions from your website, review summaries, videos and images to your ads, and some of it is on by default. Most of it has a switch. For review summaries, Google’s help describes none.
If you care what your ads say, I would turn off what you can and give Google enough of your own assets for every format, so it has less reason to add its own. If you have no video, these features give you video and images without a shoot, so keep sourced videos and image extraction on and look at what Google added once a week. Either way, make the call for each account instead of leaving it to the defaults.
Automated promotions
Google finds promotions on your landing pages, for example “Buy one get one free”, and attaches them to eligible Search and Performance Max campaigns. They show on campaigns that have location assets and no manual promotions running. Each automated promotion serves for less than 24 hours, and Google re-checks that it is still on your website (Google Ads Help).
How to turn it off:
- Go to Assets in the Campaigns menu.
- In the filter bar, click More and select Account level automated assets.
- Click More again and select Advanced settings.
- Set Automated promotions to Off.
To see what Google added, you have to check every campaign. Automated promotions, for example, show as Google AI in the Added by column (Google Ads Help).
Review summaries in Search ads
Google AI collects online reviews from across the web and writes a short summary into your Search ads. The summaries are positive only. They run in the US, Australia, the UK and India in English, for all verticals except sensitive categories such as pharmaceuticals. Advertisers cannot edit the text, and the summaries show only when Google predicts that they help performance (Google Ads Help). The help page describes no control to turn them off.
The summaries add social proof to your Search ads. In a regulated niche they are also a risk, because a claim you did not write can appear in your ad.
Sourced videos in Performance Max
Sourced videos are on by default for all new Performance Max campaigns, and Google says they may have been activated on some existing campaigns. Google can add up to 10 videos to an asset group from your social media, your landing page and your linked YouTube channel. The campaign needs a daily budget over $5 (Google Ads Help).
How to turn them off: campaign settings → Asset optimization → clear the Sourced videos checkbox. In Manage sources you approve where Google may take videos from. Check what it already took, because a sourced video can be old or made for another platform.
Landing page images in new Performance Max campaigns
Starting December 4, 2026, image extraction is on by default for new Performance Max campaigns, even if dynamic image extensions are off at the account level. Google looks for images on your landing pages and uses them on Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Existing campaigns keep their settings (Google Ads Developer Blog).
How to turn it off: campaign settings → Asset optimization → Images → clear Landing page images (Google Ads Help). Do it in each new campaign, because the account-level decision you made in the past no longer covers new campaigns.
Demand Gen creative optimizations
For video ads in Demand Gen, Shorter videos, Resized videos, Landing page previews and Generated text are ticked by default. To turn one off, hover over it and select Turn off, or open Asset optimization with Manage (Google Ads Help).
Brand queries in Performance Max
Performance Max may filter out navigational and brand queries to serve them through dedicated Search campaigns (Google Ads Help). If brand traffic matters to you, keep a brand Search campaign with enough budget.
Promotions in Merchant Center
Google reviews a promotion within 24 hours of its start time as a rule, but the review can take up to 72 hours (Merchant Center Help). Google advises submitting promotions at least 24 hours before the start, on weekdays in business hours (Merchant Center Help).
What to check in each account
- Look at which promotions your website shows, then decide on Automated promotions.
- Read the review summaries in your Search ads, especially in a regulated niche.
- In every Performance Max campaign, review the sourced videos and where they come from.
- After December 4, open Landing page images in each new Performance Max campaign.
- Go through the creative optimizations in every Demand Gen video campaign.
- Keep a brand Search campaign.
- Submit sale promotions in Merchant Center three days before the start.