How asset groups work
Performance Max serves across Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Discover from a single campaign, and the asset group is what it draws creative from. Each asset group holds a set of headlines, descriptions, images, and videos, plus an audience signal that hints at who is likely to convert. For ecommerce, an asset group is typically paired with a listing group, a slice of your product feed. Google then assembles ads from these assets and serves them wherever it predicts a conversion, which means the composition and boundaries of the group shape what gets shown and to whom.
Why asset group structure matters
Because PMax hides so much, the split of asset groups is one of the last real structural decisions you own. Dump the entire catalogue into one asset group and Google optimises to blended performance, which quietly over-serves cheap, easy-to-sell products and starves your high-margin lines. Split asset groups by margin tier, or by product category with distinct economics, and you can set target ROAS appropriately for each, so the campaign is not forced to treat a loss leader and a hero product as interchangeable. Structure is how you reintroduce margin discipline into an automated campaign.
How many asset groups to run
There is a balance. Too few asset groups blur distinct product economics together. Too many fragment the signal so thin that no group gathers enough conversions to learn from, and PMax needs volume to optimise. A practical range for most ecommerce accounts is a handful of asset groups aligned to meaningful margin or category boundaries, each with enough conversion volume to sustain learning. The right number is the smallest set that still separates products with genuinely different economics.
How iClick structures asset groups
iClick structures Performance Max asset groups by margin tier so target ROAS can be set to match each tier's economics, rather than letting one blended target average the catalogue. The rule is to keep the number of asset groups as small as possible while still separating products with genuinely different margins, so each group retains enough conversion volume to learn. This is how iClick reintroduces the margin discipline that a single-asset-group PMax campaign quietly loses.
