Paid search has a creative problem

Paid Search was previously a separate discipline from paid social, with no look in on the fun creatives, just all about the data. All we needed was keywords, ad copy and insights. Now, Google has more ad formats with creative becoming as much a necessity in your search strategy, as your paid social one. 

We have to move with the times, and as PPC managers, we have to recommend shifting budget into these new platforms like Performance Max and Demand Gen (based on data and strategy, of course), but also to avoid being left behind in the market and not facing enough customers. 

We recommend the campaign, it goes live. But often enough, no one is stopping to ask the most important question – do the assets exist to support the campaign type? 

That gap is becoming the norm rather than the exception. Performance Max now takes up to 15 images and videos. Demand Gen needs its own images, dedicated headlines and video. These aren’t formats you can turn on with the ad copy and keyword lists that used to be enough. Paid search has become a small content operation running inside every campaign and increasingly, the strategy is switched on before that content operation exists. 

The cost of launching anyway is a growing concern. Leave asset supply to Google’s defaults and you get generic, stock-like output filled by AI improvisation. Recent data suggests PMAX asset groups rated ‘Excellent’ for ad strength convert 18 to 25% more than those rated ‘Good’, and that rating depends entirely on the assets you supply. 

Creative is continually treated as a tick box to paid search campaigns, rather than a condition of them. Alongside paid social, addressing the asset needs and churn across paid media could take up more than one person’s full working week.

The strategy gets agreed, the platforms get switched on and the assets get chased afterward. By then, the campaigns already live and potentially underperforming. 

The fix isn’t more budget. It’s sequencing and prioritising. Our recommendations include: 

Design once, create a template. Something you can resize and recombine across ad placements, incorporating brand layouts, colour treatments and copy frameworks, ready before the next format shift lands, not built in response to it.  
Get design in the room at briefing stage, alongside the strategy recommendation, not after it’s approved. Scope the assets needed and the cost in the same conversation as the format decision.  
Plan it in. Build creative into the design team’s regular planning cadence, so a new campaign format is a known input, not an unplanned request landing on someone’s desk mid-sprint.  
Use platform reports to keep pace. Google recommends replacing low-rated assets every two to three weeks, refreshing images every four to six weeks and video every six to eight weeks. That cadence needs to be built into the plan from the start, not discovered once performance has already dipped. 

Recommending a format because the data supports it is good Paid Search strategy. Recommending it without the assets to back it up isn’t a resourcing oversight, it’s a strategy that hasn’t finished being built. Creative and paid search must move at the same pace, or the strategy is only half-made when it goes live. 

If you need help with your paid search strategy, drop BIG’s team of digital specialists a line at [email protected] to chat about how we can solve your challenges.