Google Ads quietly expanded two Performance Max asset settings this week, and one is already on for some advertisers without an opt-in click. According to Search Engine Land’s October 22, 2026 report, Google is rolling out a Performance Max sourced videos setting that pulls footage from an advertiser’s other channels, plus a landing page images option that lifts photos off a website. The same week, Google widened who qualifies for Performance Max retention and acquisition bidding controls. If you manage Performance Max, both updates are worth five minutes today.
What Changed in Performance Max This Week
Search Engine Land’s Anu Adegbola reported that an advertiser, Reva Minkoff, spotted a new “Sourced videos” toggle inside the asset optimization panel of a Performance Max campaign. Minkoff’s screenshot showed the setting grouped under Video optimization, alongside an existing Video enhancement toggle. A second option, Landing page images, sits in the parallel Image optimization section.
Per the report, Sourced videos was switched on by default in the account where it was spotted, while Landing page images was off. That is not a universal claim about every account, but it is enough reason to open your own settings and look, rather than assume nothing changed.
This arrives in the same week Google expanded Performance Max retention goals and new customer bidding to Shopping campaigns, a separate update covered later in this piece.
How the Performance Max Sourced Videos Setting Works
Google’s own developer documentation gives the clearest technical description. The relevant setting is called AUTOMATED_VIDEO_CRAWL, and Google’s asset automation settings reference says it “allows Google to find and use videos from your landing page.” That same documentation lists the setting as disabled by default at the API level, starting in API version 25, which creates a gap between what the spec says and what one advertiser saw in the UI. Google has not explained that gap publicly, so treat this as a live rollout where defaults vary.
According to the Search Engine Land report, the sourced videos feature can draw clips from social media accounts, from the advertiser’s own landing pages, and from a linked YouTube channel. The article says Google can add up to 10 sourced videos to an asset group, more than the five-video manual upload limit that an earlier Google post described. Neither Search Engine Land nor Google has reconciled that number publicly.
Google’s support documentation on video assets for Performance Max confirms the broader pattern: Google has generated videos from asset group text and images for years, and its AI can also reformat a horizontal video into square or vertical versions for YouTube Shorts. The new piece is sourcing finished video from channels you did not upload directly into the campaign, not just remixing what you already gave it.
Landing Page Images Works the Same Way, Just for Photos
The image side is less novel. Google’s documentation describes a long-standing capability, sometimes called dynamic image extraction, that lets Performance Max lift images straight from a landing page when it judges them likely to improve an ad. This is managed through an account-level Dynamic Image Extension control, and the new Landing page images toggle appears to be the campaign-level expression of that same setting.
What is new is the framing. Search Engine Land’s report groups landing page images alongside sourced videos as the two headline items in this release, suggesting Google is pushing both into more accounts and making them more visible inside the campaign settings panel rather than burying them in account preferences.
Why Google Ads Turned This On By Default
Google has not published an announcement explaining its reasoning, so this section is interpretation, not confirmed fact. In my experience watching Performance Max rollouts, Google tends to default new automation settings to “on” when it believes the feature improves average account performance and carries low downside for most advertisers. Image enhancement and final URL expansion both followed that pattern before this update.
What this means for you: Google is betting that more creative variety, sourced automatically, outperforms a smaller manually curated asset set for most accounts. That bet may hold on average. It does not mean it holds for your specific brand, your specific landing pages, or your specific social content.
The Legal and Brand Risk Worth Checking Before You Move On
Google’s asset automation documentation includes a line advertisers should not skip. Turning on automated video crawling means you are confirming you own the rights to the video Google pulls in and serves as an ad. If your landing pages or linked social accounts carry licensed stock footage, user-generated content, or a freelancer’s unlicensed edit, that confirmation becomes your problem, not Google’s.
There is also a disclosure angle. Google’s AI content label policy requires an AI-generated or AI-edited label on ads using these kinds of automated assets in the European Union, India, and New York state. According to Search Engine Land’s reporting, that labeling requirement extends to ads built with sourced videos and enhanced images, so a campaign running in those markets may show a visible disclosure badge you did not design or approve.
None of this means the feature is unsafe to use. It means it is not a feature to leave on autopilot the first week it appears, especially for regulated industries, franchise brands with licensing agreements, or any advertiser whose legal team cares about where ad creative comes from.
How to Check Your Performance Max Sourced Videos Setting
You do not need the Google Ads API to see or change this. Both settings live in the Google Ads web interface, inside each Performance Max campaign.
- Open the Performance Max campaign, then go to the asset group you want to check.
- Find the asset optimization section, typically near the bottom of the asset group editor.
- Look under Video optimization for the Sourced videos toggle, and under Image optimization for Landing page images.
- Review any sourced assets Google has already pulled in. You can remove individual assets without disabling the setting entirely.
- Decide per campaign whether the setting fits your brand and legal comfort level, rather than applying one blanket rule across every account.
Search Engine Land’s reporting notes these settings currently have no API equivalent, so accounts managed primarily through scripts or bulk API tools will need a manual pass in the UI to confirm status. That is a real workflow gap if you manage dozens of Performance Max campaigns through automation, and it is worth flagging to whoever owns your Google Ads account structure.
How This Fits the Rest of Performance Max Automation
Sourced videos is not the first Performance Max setting that ships enabled. Google’s asset automation reference lists several defaults that are already on for most accounts: image enhancement, enhanced YouTube video generation, and text asset automation all default to enabled inside Performance Max. Final URL expansion, which lets Google pick a different landing page than the one you specified, also defaults to enabled for Performance Max, though it stays off by default for standard Search campaigns.
That pattern matters here because it tells you Google treats Performance Max as the product line where broad automation is the norm, not the exception. If you have never audited these settings because you trusted the defaults on launch day, this week’s sourced videos rollout is a reasonable prompt to check all of them in one pass, not just the newest one. It is the same mindset DevByteDaily recommended when covering Google Ads Data Strength signals: default settings are not the same as settings you have actually reviewed.
It is also worth separating this from Demand Gen, Google’s other asset-heavy campaign type. Demand Gen has its own automation settings, including generating videos from other assets and creating shorter YouTube cuts, documented separately in Google’s API reference. The mechanics are similar in spirit, pulling or remixing creative automatically, but the toggles, defaults, and campaign types are distinct, so checking one does not confirm the other.
Other Performance Max Changes This Week: Retention Goals and Acquisition Bidding
The same week, Search Engine Land reported that Google Ads widened three related bidding controls across Performance Max, Search, and Shopping campaigns, built around customer lifecycle value rather than asset sourcing.
New Customer High Value mode reaches Shopping. This mode, previously available on Search and Performance Max, now extends to Shopping campaigns starting this month. It lets Google bid more for new customers predicted to be worth more over time, while still reaching your broader audience.
Retention goals move out of beta. Google’s own help documentation on the retention goal describes re-engagement targeting for lapsed customers and loyalty targeting for program members, both inside Performance Max and, per this week’s update, more widely in Shopping. Re-engagement lets you set a bid value for a lapsed customer, which Google recommends setting between your typical new-customer and existing-customer values. Loyalty targeting requires a Customer Match list of members and benefit data in your Merchant Center feed.
Percentage-based customer value multipliers. Instead of a flat dollar adjustment, advertisers can now set a customer value adjustment as a percentage. A 20 percent multiplier raises the bidding value proportionally whether a customer’s order is $50 or $500, which is a more realistic way to handle a business with a wide range of order sizes.
None of these three updates has a confirmed general availability date beyond “this month,” and Search Engine Land’s report includes no direct quote from Google confirming rollout percentage or regional availability. Treat “rolling out in October 2026” as directionally true and check your own account’s settings before assuming you have access. If you are also rethinking how budget moves between campaign types, our Google Ads channel prioritization guide covers the budget cap settings that pair well with these lifecycle goals.
What This Means If You Run Performance Max
The honest read here has two sides. On the upside, automated asset sourcing can genuinely help accounts that under-invest in creative variety, which is a common and measurable weak point in Performance Max performance. More video and image variety, sourced without extra production budget, is a real efficiency gain for small teams.
On the downside, “on by default” plus “no API visibility” is a combination that favors Google’s automation goals more than advertiser control. If you run Performance Max for a client, a regulated brand, or anyone with strict creative approval workflows, this is the kind of setting that causes a bad week when a client notices an ad they never approved. We have seen that exact pattern before with other default-on Performance Max settings, including automated promotions, which DevByteDaily covered when it launched in October 2026.
My recommendation, based on how Google has rolled out similar automation in the past, is to audit the setting per campaign rather than deciding once for your whole account. A direct-to-consumer brand with strong UGC and a flexible creative team may be fine leaving sourced videos on. An agency managing a pharmaceutical or financial services client almost certainly should not, at least not without a legal sign-off first.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Performance Max sourced videos setting?
It is a Performance Max asset optimization option that lets Google pull video from an advertiser’s other channels, including social accounts, landing pages, and a linked YouTube channel, and use that footage as ad creative.
Is Performance Max sourced videos on by default?
In the account where Search Engine Land’s source found it, yes. Google’s own developer documentation lists the underlying setting as disabled by default at the API level starting in API version 25, so defaults may differ between the API and the web interface, or may vary during rollout. Check your own account rather than assuming either answer.
Can I turn off Performance Max sourced videos?
Yes. The toggle sits in the asset optimization section of each asset group, under Video optimization, and can be switched off there. There is currently no way to manage it through the Google Ads API.
Do ads using sourced videos need an AI disclosure label?
According to Google’s AI content label policy and Search Engine Land’s reporting, ads built with these automated assets carry an AI-generated or AI-edited label in the European Union, India, and New York state.
What are Google Ads retention goals?
Retention goals are a Performance Max and Shopping bidding feature that targets lapsed customers for re-engagement or loyalty program members for retention, using Customer Match lists and a value you assign to each segment.
Does the sourced videos setting cost extra?
Neither Google’s documentation nor Search Engine Land’s reporting mentions a separate fee for sourced videos or landing page images. They run inside your existing Performance Max budget, the same way manually uploaded assets do.
Why This Matters
Performance Max keeps moving toward more automation with less visibility for the advertiser, and this week’s sourced videos rollout is a clear example of that trend. The setting itself is not dangerous, but shipping it on by default, with no API control and an unresolved rights question, puts the burden on you to notice it.
Open each active Performance Max asset group this week and check the Video optimization and Image optimization sections. Note what is on, remove any sourced asset that does not fit your brand, and decide deliberately, campaign by campaign, rather than by default.
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