Performance Max Turns Image Extraction On by Default

Performance Max Turns Image Extraction On by Default

Released on 21 October 2026, Google's announcement confirms that from 4 December 2026 every new Performance Max campaign will pull images from your landing pages by default, even when dynamic images are switched off for the whole account. Read the Google Ads Developer Blog release note here.

Performance Max image extraction lets Google take photos from the pages your ads point to and use them as ad creative. The feature is not new. What changes on 4 December is who has to act to keep it switched off. Until now, an advertiser who had turned off dynamic images at account level could rely on that one setting to keep landing page images out of new Performance Max campaigns. From 4 December that account-level switch no longer protects new campaigns. Each one will be created with image extraction on, and the only way to stop it is to untick the setting inside the campaign itself.

The change applies to campaigns created in the Google Ads interface, in Google Ads Editor and through the Google Ads API. Google says existing Performance Max campaigns keep their current configuration, so nothing already running will change overnight. The risk sits with the next campaign you build, and for most retailers that will be a campaign launched during Christmas trading or for the January sales.

How it works

Two controls are involved, and the change alters how they relate to each other. The first is the account-level dynamic images setting, found under Assets, then Account-level automated assets, then Advanced settings. It is shared with Search campaigns, where dynamic image assets add pictures from your landing page to text ads. The second is a campaign-level control called Landing page images, which Google added to Performance Max in April 2025 and which sits in the Images tile of each campaign's Asset optimisation settings.

Today, a Performance Max campaign with no campaign-level choice recorded inherits the account setting. Google's Performance Max automation feature table lists the default for image extraction as "Account-level setting", and notes that the campaign-level control overrides the account-level one. At the time of writing, Google's help pages still say that new campaigns are created with landing page images on only if you are opted into dynamic images. From 4 December the default for new campaigns becomes opted in, whatever the account says.

Once it is on, Google scans the campaign's landing pages for high-resolution images and uses them to add variety to your creative across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. According to Google's guide to opting in or out of landing page images, the system picks the images most relevant to the query or serving context, and they pass automated and manual quality checks before they serve. If no suitable image exists on the page, you get none.

Landing page images are a separate setting from image enhancements, which sit next to them in Asset optimisation. Enhancements change the images you uploaded yourself: Google lists smart cropping, text and logo overlays, higher resolution, expanded dimensions, animation and added backgrounds. New campaigns are already opted into enhancements by default. Extraction decides where images come from, and enhancements decide what happens to them. Turning one off does not turn off the other.

Examples and use cases

Take a fashion retailer that switched dynamic images off two years ago because its lookbook photography was licensed for the website only. Its existing Performance Max campaigns carry on as before. In mid-December it builds a new campaign for a gift guide. Nobody on the team remembers that the account-level setting was ever relevant, and the new campaign goes live with landing page images ticked. Images from the gift guide page, including the licensed lookbook shots, are now eligible to appear in YouTube, Discover and Gmail placements.

An agency managing a portfolio of client accounts faces the same problem at scale. Many agencies build campaigns from a standard template in Google Ads Editor, or through a reporting or bid management tool that talks to the API. If the template relied on the account-level switch rather than setting the campaign control explicitly, every new campaign created after 4 December will come out opted in. Google's advice to API users is direct: if you rely on account-level controls and do not want image extraction, set new campaigns to opted out yourself.

Service businesses are exposed in a different way. A builder, an architect or a landscaper usually fills the site with photos of finished client projects, and accountancy and law firms often show staff portraits. Those images do a job on the website, where captions and context explain them. Pulled into a Display or Gmail ad on their own, a photo of a client's kitchen or an employee's headshot is a different proposition, and not one either party necessarily agreed to.

The feature is not all downside. A small advertiser with three or four uploaded images and a well-photographed product range may find that landing page images give Performance Max more creative to work with, and that is the case Google makes for it. The point of the change is not that extraction is bad. It is that the decision now has to be made campaign by campaign rather than once for the account.

What this means for UK advertisers

The legal exposure is the part most UK businesses will not have considered. When you opt into landing page images, Google says you are confirming that you own all legal rights to the images on your landing page and have permission to share them with Google for advertising or other commercial purposes. For dynamic image assets on Search, the confirmation goes further and includes permission for Google to modify the images and create derivative works. From 4 December that confirmation becomes the default state of every new Performance Max campaign.

Having an image on your website is not the same as having the right to use it in ads. The Intellectual Property Office's guidance on ownership of copyright works says that when you commission a work, the person who created it is the first owner of copyright unless you agree otherwise in writing. A court may find an implied licence to use commissioned work for the purpose it was commissioned for, but that may only be a limited, non-exclusive licence. A photographer hired for website imagery, a stock library licence with usage limits, or product shots supplied by a manufacturer may not cover paid advertising. Check the licences before the default decides for you.

The timing matters too. 4 December lands in the middle of Christmas trading, when retailers are most likely to launch new campaigns for last-order dates, gift guides and the January sales. Add a Landing page images check to the campaign build checklist now, rather than discovering the change in a January asset report. If you want a second pair of eyes on how your campaigns are set up more generally, our Google Ads management service covers this kind of account-level audit.

It is not the only recent default to move from off to on. Google made Local Inventory Ads the default for standard Shopping campaigns from 31 August 2026. The pattern is consistent: features move from opt-in to opt-out, and the advertiser who is not watching ends up opted in. As we argued in our piece on why Performance Max fails without good data, the campaign is only as good as what it is fed, and from December that includes every image on your landing pages.

Practical considerations

Start by checking where you stand today. In each account, open Assets, then Account-level automated assets, then Advanced settings, and see whether dynamic images are on or off. If they are off, assume that was a deliberate choice and that new Performance Max campaigns will need the Landing page images box unticked by hand from 4 December. To change it on a live campaign, open the campaign's Settings, go to Asset optimisation, open the Images tile and tick or untick Landing page images.

Google says existing campaigns keep their current configuration, but it does not spell out what happens to an existing campaign that has never had a campaign-level choice and simply inherits the account setting. The cautious approach is to set the control explicitly on every Performance Max campaign you care about, so nothing depends on inheritance. If a tool or script builds or edits your campaigns through the API, ask whoever maintains it to check. Google warns that updating a campaign's list of automation settings replaces the whole list, so an update meant to switch off image extraction can also clear other choices, such as text customisation.

Two further points are worth watching. Google says you can see landing page images in your account and remove the ones you do not want, and for dynamic image assets its help page points to the Assets view filtered by "Added by" Google AI; check that view after any new launch. And if final URL expansion is on, Google can send traffic to pages other than the ones you entered. Google's help pages do not say whether extraction is limited to the final URLs you chose in that case, so treat any page Google might send traffic to as a possible image source.

One of the original arguments for pay-per-click, set out in our overview of how PPC advertising works and why businesses use it, was precise control over what you show and where. Defaults like this one wear that control down unless someone is checking the settings each time a campaign is built.

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