The asset library is the storage area in a Google Ads account that holds the images, logos and videos you have uploaded or created, so you can reuse them across campaigns without uploading them again. It sits in the shared library, alongside other account-wide tools such as negative keyword lists.
How the asset library works
Whenever you add an image or logo to a campaign, it is saved to the library. You can also add assets directly: upload files from your computer, let Google scan your website for usable images, pick from free stock images Google offers, link YouTube videos, or create images with Google’s generative tools. When you later build a Performance Max asset group, a Demand Gen ad or a display ad, you choose from the library rather than starting again.
The library also offers basic editing. You can crop an image to the shapes different placements need, such as landscape, square and portrait, and at the time of writing (October 2026) use AI editing to extend backgrounds or remove them. Each placement has minimum sizes and file limits, and the library tells you if an image asset is too small for a particular use.
Videos are not stored in the library as files. They live on YouTube, usually as unlisted videos on a channel you control, and the library holds a link to them. Every video asset therefore depends on that YouTube video staying available.
Why it matters
Automated campaigns need lots of visual material in several shapes. Without an organised library, accounts end up with the same photograph uploaded ten times under different names, old branding still in use, and images nobody is sure they have the right to use. A tidy library makes it quicker to build new campaigns and safer to run them.
Rights matter more than people expect. Images scanned from your own website may include photographs supplied by a manufacturer or a photographer on terms that do not cover advertising. Before an image goes into an ad, check its image licence covers paid promotion. A UK business that uses an image without the right licence can face a claim from the rights holder, regardless of how Google found it.
Common mistakes
- Uploading images with poor file names, so nobody can tell which version is current.
- Using website scans without checking who owns the photographs.
- Leaving old logos in the library after a rebrand, so they keep appearing in new campaigns.
- Hosting ad videos on a personal or agency YouTube channel that the business does not control. If the channel is deleted, the ads lose their videos.
- Relying only on stock images, which look the same as competitors’ ads.
How to act on it
Treat the asset library as part of the account’s housekeeping. Agree a naming pattern, such as service, theme, shape and date, and use it for every upload. Remove or replace outdated logos and images after any branding change, and check your business name and logo assets still match your current brand.
Build a proper set of your own photographs in the three main shapes for each service you advertise, and keep the originals somewhere outside Google Ads as well. Host videos on a YouTube channel owned by the business. Reviewing and tidying the library is a regular task in my PPC management work, because it makes every later campaign quicker to build and easier to trust.