Responsive search ads

Page Summary

Responsive search ads use multiple headlines and descriptions that rotate to find the best performing combinations.
You can pin specific headlines and descriptions to always appear in certain positions in the ad.
Performance statistics are collected on different combinations to optimize ad effectiveness.
The displayed URL can be customized using path1 and path2 fields.

Use responsive search ads to promote products on the Google Network. The main features of responsive search ads are that they let you:

Set three to 15 headlines and two to four descriptions that automatically rotate into the ad to determine which combinations perform best.
Pin any headlines and descriptions you want so that they always appear in a designated position in the ad.
Collect performance statistics on different combinations of headlines and descriptions so you can evaluate their effectiveness. The system automatically favors headline and description combinations that work well together.
Display customized URLs by specifying path1 and path2, which are appended to the end of your landing page domain to form the displayed URL.

Format

Responsive search ads can display up to three headlines and up to two descriptions at serve time, plus a customizable URL based on the landing page domain and how you configure the path1 and path2 fields on your ResponsiveSearchAdInfo object.

Here's an example of what a responsive search ad looks like:

Headlines and descriptions are configured as arrays of AdTextAsset message objects inside ResponsiveSearchAdInfo.

Pin assets to specific positions

Responsive search ads also support asset pinning. If you want finer control than allowing the system to mix and match all headlines and descriptions, you can pin headlines and descriptions to specific positions using the pinned_field property on AdTextAsset (or pinnedField in JSON requests). Valid ServedAssetFieldType values for pinned_field are:

Headlines: HEADLINE_1, HEADLINE_2, or HEADLINE_3
Descriptions: DESCRIPTION_1 or DESCRIPTION_2

For example, if you want a specific headline to always appear first, set its pinned_field to ServedAssetFieldType.HEADLINE_1. Whenever that ad is served, that specific text appears in the first headline position and the remaining positions are drawn from the pool of unpinned assets. If more than one asset is pinned to the same position, that position rotates text among the assets pinned to it.

When pinning assets in headlines or descriptions, every position (HEADLINE_1–HEADLINE_3 for headlines; DESCRIPTION_1–DESCRIPTION_2 for descriptions) must be fillable either by an asset pinned to that position or by a distinct unpinned asset. For example, pinning all three headlines in a 3-headline ad to HEADLINE_1 leaves HEADLINE_2 and HEADLINE_3 without eligible assets and fails with an AssetLinkError of NOT_ENOUGH_AVAILABLE_ASSET_LINKS_FOR_VALID_COMBINATION (or NOT_ENOUGH_AVAILABLE_ASSET_LINKS_WITH_FALLBACK_FOR_VALID_COMBINATION when using ad customizers without default fallback values).

See Create responsive search ads for complete code examples.

Text customization and automatically created assets

When you enable campaign-level text customization (called automatically created assets in the API) on a Search campaign, Google Ads can automatically generate additional headlines and descriptions from your landing page, domain, and ads and keywords to serve alongside your advertiser-provided assets:

To enable text customization on a Search campaign, set Campaign.ai_max_setting.enable_ai_max to true to enable AI Max for Search campaigns, and set TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION to OPTED_IN in Campaign.asset_automation_settings. Setting enable_ai_max to true alone only enables search term matching by default (TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION and FINAL_URL_EXPANSION_TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION both default to OPTED_OUT for Search campaigns). Conversely, setting either automation type to OPTED_IN without enable_ai_max set to true fails with CampaignError.AI_MAX_MUST_BE_ENABLED.
You can enable TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION while leaving FINAL_URL_EXPANSION_TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION set to OPTED_OUT. However, setting FINAL_URL_EXPANSION_TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION to OPTED_IN requires TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION to also be set to OPTED_IN; opting in to FINAL_URL_EXPANSION_TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION while TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION is OPTED_OUT fails with ContextError.OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED_FOR_CONTEXT.
You can configure campaign-level Campaign.text_guidelines (TextGuidelines) to specify exact term exclusions (term_exclusions) and freeform messaging restrictions (messaging_restrictions) for automatically generated text assets in Search campaigns with AI Max for Search campaigns enabled.
Because automatically created assets aren't returned in ad_group_ad.ad.responsive_search_ad and can't be removed using AdService.MutateAds, you can remove unwanted ad-level automatically created headlines and descriptions using AdGroupAdService.RemoveAutomaticallyCreatedAssets (or remove campaign-level Final URL expansion text assets using RemoveCampaignAutomaticallyCreatedAsset on AutomaticallyCreatedAssetRemovalService).
You can query the read-only Campaign.aca_migration_date_time field to check when a Search campaign using automatically created assets was migrated to AI Max for Search campaigns.

For configuration details, see Asset automation settings and Get started with AI Max for Search campaigns. To distinguish between advertiser-provided and automatically created assets in reports, see Retrieve responsive search ads.

Additional resources

To learn more about working with responsive search ads in the Google Ads API and Google Ads, see the following guides and Help Center articles:

Create ads