If you already run Performance Max against a live product feed, you don't need a pep talk about "getting started." You need the exact dimensions so your asset groups stop getting rejected — and a clear-eyed read on which specs actually move revenue versus which ones just unblock the upload.
This guide gives you both. First the precise, current numbers. Then the part the other spec lists skip: for a retail account, the creative you sweat over is a minority of where the money goes.
What "Performance Max specs" actually means
When people search "performance max specs," they almost always mean the asset requirements — the image dimensions, text character limits, and video rules Google enforces when you build or edit an asset group. That's the useful definition for an operator, so that's what this covers.
Performance Max is Google's cross-inventory campaign. One campaign serves across Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Maps, driven by your product feed plus the asset group you supply. The specs below govern that asset group.
One framing fact before the numbers: for retailers, Performance Max is mostly Shopping under the hood. smec, which manages feeds for hundreds of retailers, reports that 74–97% of Performance Max cost goes to feed-based ads. Keep that number in mind while you read the image specs.
Performance Max image specs
Every image asset must be JPG or PNG, and each is capped at 5,120 KB (about 5 MB). The dimensions and quantities below come straight from Google's Performance Max asset requirements.
| Image type | Aspect ratio | Recommended | Minimum | Quantity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Landscape (marketing) | 1.91:1 | 1200 × 628 | 600 × 314 | 1–20 |
| Square (marketing) | 1:1 | 1200 × 1200 | 300 × 300 | 1–20 |
| Portrait (marketing) | 4:5 | 960 × 1200 | 480 × 600 | up to 20 |
| Landscape logo | 4:1 | 1200 × 300 | 512 × 128 | up to 20 |
| Logo | 1:1 | 1200 × 1200 | 128 × 128 | 1–5 |
The practical read: you must supply at least one landscape and one square image to launch, and a 1:1 logo is required unless brand guidelines are turned off. Portrait and the 4:1 landscape logo are optional but worth adding, because they unlock more placements (portrait is what serves full-screen on mobile).
Google also rejects images with heavy text overlays, borders, collages, watermarks, or anything blurry, stretched, or pixelated per the same requirements page. If an asset group won't go live, a disallowed image is the usual culprit — check there before you blame the campaign.
The "performance max image specs" shortcut
If you only remember three numbers, remember these: 1200 × 628 for landscape, 1200 × 1200 for square and the square logo, and 960 × 1200 for portrait. Export at those sizes, keep each file under 5 MB, and you clear the bar for the image slots that matter most.
Text asset specs
Text assets have their own character ceilings and counts, also documented on Google's asset requirements page:
| Text asset | Max characters | Quantity |
|---|---|---|
| Headlines | 30 | 3–15 |
| Long headlines | 90 | 1–5 |
| Descriptions | 90 | 2–5 |
| Business name | 25 | 1 |
A couple of operator notes. Headlines are capped at 30 characters, which is tight — write them as standalone claims, not sentence fragments, because Google mixes and matches them. Supplying the full fifteen headlines gives the system more combinations to test, which is cheap upside.
Many spec guides also list a display URL path of up to 15 characters per segment, which DataFeedWatch's spec roundup documents alongside the core text assets. It's minor, but it's a free place to reinforce a category keyword.
Video specs
Video is optional, but if you don't add one, Google may auto-generate a plain one from your assets. Supplying your own is usually better.
Per Google's requirements, videos must be hosted on YouTube, run at least ten seconds, and come in 16:9 (horizontal), 1:1 (square), or 9:16 (vertical). Adding all three orientations covers the widest set of placements — vertical for Shorts and mobile feeds, horizontal for in-stream.
The spec every list skips: your feed is the real input
Here's where a spec roundup should stop being a spec roundup. You can nail every dimension above and still watch an asset group underperform, because — as that smec figure showed — the overwhelming majority of a retailer's Performance Max spend flows through feed-based Shopping ads, not the display and video creative you built.
That means your real "specs" live in Merchant Center: product titles, GTINs, high-quality images, accurate price and availability, and price parity with your landing page. Google's Merchant Center guidance treats those attributes as what decides which auctions your products enter at all. Shopping has no keywords — the product title is the query-matching surface.
So the honest priority order for an operating store is: get the feed clean, then meet the asset specs, then iterate creative. Most "performance max specs" articles invert that and never mention the feed. The portfolio context matters too — Optmyzr's study of tens of thousands of campaigns found that most advertisers run Performance Max alongside Shopping or Search rather than treating it as a standalone. The specs are table stakes for one piece of a bigger system, which is the lens our Google Ads economics guide uses throughout.
Worked example: specs are free, margin is the constraint
Specs don't cost you anything but an afternoon in your image editor. Your margin is what decides whether a spec-perfect campaign survives. Walk the math.
Say your store does 340 orders a month at a $31 average order value. After base cost, fulfillment, shipping share, and payment fees, you keep a 38% contribution margin — about $11.78 of profit per order before ad spend. Your break-even return on ad spend is simply 1 ÷ 0.38 = 2.63x.
Now suppose a perfectly compliant asset group drives Performance Max to a reported 3.2x ROAS. On the surface that clears break-even. But run it through margin: at 3.2x you earn $3.20 in revenue per $1 spent, which at 38% margin is $1.22 of contribution per ad dollar — a real but thin gain. Drop to a 2.4x ROAS and you're underwater, no matter how crisp your 1200 × 1200 square looked.
That's the operator takeaway: your target ROAS should be derived from this math — break-even times a profit buffer — not from a benchmark you read somewhere. Google's own documentation on target ROAS warns that setting a target far above what the account has achieved "may limit the amount of traffic your ads may get." Specs get you into the auction; margin math keeps you solvent inside it.
Where the specs meet profit
The gap between "specs met" and "money made" is exactly the gap Victor, the AI employee inside PodVector AI, is built to close for POD sellers. Victor is a full Google Ads operator — he reads the live campaign data, and every write action he proposes is approval-gated, so nothing changes until you say go.
Because Victor also connects to Shopify, your print provider (Printify, Printful, or Gelato), and Meta, he computes true per-order profit — price minus base cost, shipping, and fees — not just the ROAS Google reports. He can draft the report to your Google Drive so you see which SKUs actually carry the account. Victor is not a dashboard you log into; he's an operator who does the reconciliation you'd otherwise do by hand. You can put Victor to work on your store and keep final approval on every action.
The same "specs are the easy part" logic shows up outside advertising — the way a product spec sheet rarely tells the whole story, whether you're reading a lab's VO2 max testing price or a max-performance plunger's listing. Numbers on a page clear the gate; economics decide the outcome. When you're ready to scale Shopping specifically, our Google Shopping ads agency breakdown walks the economics of outsourcing versus running it in-house.
FAQs
What are the Performance Max image specs in short?
Landscape at 1200 × 628 (1.91:1), square at 1200 × 1200 (1:1), optional portrait at 960 × 1200 (4:5), a 4:1 landscape logo at 1200 × 300, and a 1:1 logo at 1200 × 1200 — each JPG or PNG, up to 5,120 KB, per Google's asset requirements. You need at least one landscape and one square to launch.
How many headlines and descriptions does Performance Max require?
Three to fifteen headlines (30 characters each), one to five long headlines (90 characters), two to five descriptions (90 characters), and one business name (25 characters), again per Google. Supplying the maximum gives the system more combinations to test.
Do I have to upload a video?
No, but if you don't, Google may auto-build a basic one from your assets. A video you supply — at least ten seconds, in 16:9, 1:1, or 9:16 — usually beats the auto-generated version, and it unlocks more placements.
Why does my asset group get rejected even when sizes are correct?
Usually a content rule, not a dimension. Google rejects images with heavy text, borders, collages, watermarks, or low quality. It can also flag feed-level problems — a price or availability mismatch between your feed and landing page — so check Merchant Center diagnostics alongside the asset group.
Are the image specs the most important lever for a store?
No. For retailers, the majority of Performance Max spend runs through feed-based Shopping ads, so product titles, GTINs, feed image quality, and price parity usually move revenue more than the asset-group creative. Meet the specs, then put your real effort into the feed and your margin math.
Should I set my target ROAS to match a benchmark I found online?
No. Derive it from your own break-even — 1 ÷ contribution margin — times a profit buffer. A benchmark CPC or ROAS from a vendor's book of business is directional context; your margin is the decision. Setting a target far above your account's demonstrated performance tends to suppress volume rather than create efficiency.