The Elite Brands Performance Max Asset Groups Structure Framework

24 June

We’ve audited over 100 Google Ads accounts in the last year. The same mistake appears in at least 80 of them. A single Performance Max campaign holds one giant, messy asset group trying to sell everything to everyone.

It’s the digital equivalent of throwing all your products into one big pile on the shop floor and hoping for the best.

This approach treats PMax like a black box you just pour money into. It wastes spend, muddies your data, and makes it impossible to know what’s actually working. Google’s automation is powerful, but it needs a clear structure to perform.

I learned this the hard way scaling my own brand. We figured out that giving the algorithm guardrails is the key. This post outlines the exact three-tier framework we use at Elite Brands to bring order to PMax chaos.

Why a structured approach to pmax asset groups matters

Most brands default to a single asset group because it’s the path of least resistance. Google’s setup process encourages it. You create a campaign, upload all your headlines, images, and videos, connect a product feed, and let it run.

The result is a campaign at war with itself.

One asset group tries to acquire new customers with top-of-funnel branding while also pushing a 40% off sale to a remarketing list. Google’s algorithm can’t optimise effectively when it’s given conflicting goals. Your brand awareness creative gets served to bottom-funnel audiences, and your hard-sell offer gets shown to people who have never heard of you.

This leads to wasted spend and unpredictable results. One week ROAS is great, the next it crashes. You have no idea why because all your data is aggregated into a single, unreadable line item.

A structured approach fixes this. By separating asset groups based on their strategic purpose, you gain clarity and control. You can see which product categories are performing, which messaging resonates with new customers, and how your sales promotions are tracking.

It allows you to allocate budget intelligently. You can push more spend towards high-margin product lines or dial back on categories that aren’t performing. This is impossible when everything is lumped together.

Organisation is the foundation for scale. You can’t build a million-dollar-a-month ad account on a messy foundation. Our entire methodology is built on creating systems that deliver consistent outcomes, and this structure is a core part of our process.

The Elite Brands 3-tier pmax asset groups structure

After years of managing PMax campaigns for our own brands and for clients, we developed a simple but powerful framework. We organise all asset groups into three distinct tiers. This structure covers the full marketing funnel and aligns with clear business objectives.

This 3-tier system is a key part of our wider PMax Optimisation Framework. It provides the blueprint for everything else we do inside a campaign.

Tier 1: Foundational asset groups

This is your ‘always-on’ brand layer. It’s the base of the pyramid.

The goal of a Foundational asset group is to capture general demand and introduce your brand to new audiences. The messaging is broad, focusing on your unique value proposition, evergreen offers like “Free Shipping Over $100”, or your main product categories.

For a fashion brand, this asset group might contain lifestyle imagery, headlines about quality or sustainability, and videos showcasing the overall brand aesthetic. It would target broad audiences interested in fashion and apparel.

This tier usually runs with a lower ROAS target. Its job is new customer acquisition, which is always more expensive. We see this as a necessary investment in feeding the top of the funnel.

Tier 2: Product/service specific asset groups

This is where we get granular. Tier 2 asset groups are built around specific product lines, collections, or even hero SKUs.

The power here comes from segmentation. We break out asset groups for a brand’s most important product categories. A supplement company might have separate asset groups for “Protein Powders,” “Vitamins,” and “Pre-Workout.”

Each of these asset groups gets its own dedicated creative. The headlines, images, and videos speak directly to the customer looking for that specific solution. The ad for pre-workout talks about energy and focus, while the vitamin ad talks about health and wellness.

We heavily use product feed filtering here. The “Protein Powders” asset group is linked only to the protein powder SKUs in the Shopify feed via a listing group. This ensures Google shows the right products with the right ads. This level of control is critical for aligning ad creative with the specific products being promoted.

Tier 3: Promotional and seasonal asset groups

This tier is for time-sensitive campaigns. It’s where you run your sales, holiday promotions, and new product launches.

These asset groups have a defined start and end date. Examples include “Black Friday Sale,” “Mother’s Day Gift Guide,” or “New Winter Collection Launch.” The creative is urgent and direct, focusing on the offer or the event.

The key here is agility. We build these asset groups in advance and activate them when the promotion starts. Once the sale is over, we pause them immediately. This prevents message mismatch, like showing a “40% Off” ad a week after the sale has ended. I’ve seen that happen in dozens of accounts.

These campaigns typically have the highest ROAS targets because they often target warmer audiences, like remarketing lists and past purchasers. They are designed for one thing: to drive a high volume of conversions in a short period.

Aligning performance max asset groups with business goals

Structure for its own sake is pointless. The 3-tier framework is designed to map your PMax activity directly to your business objectives.

Each tier serves a different goal.

Tier 1 (Foundational) is for brand building and new customer acquisition. If the CEO’s goal is to increase market share, we allocate more budget here. The primary KPI isn’t just ROAS; it’s New Customer ROAS or a raw increase in new users to the site.

Tier 2 (Product Specific) is for profitability and margin control. A client came to us with a hero product line that had a 75% gross margin, but it was buried in their old PMax campaign. This kind of hidden opportunity is exactly what our free Google Ads audit is designed to uncover, flagging what’s leaking budget and where the structural wins are. We created a dedicated Tier 2 asset group for it. We fed it with specific creative and its own budget. Within 60 days, sales for that product line increased by 200%, and the account’s overall profitability jumped significantly.

Tier 3 (Promotional) is for hitting revenue targets and managing inventory. If you need to clear out old stock before a new season, you build a Tier 3 “Clearance Sale” asset group. If you need to hit a quarterly revenue number, you run a flash sale. This tier gives you a lever to pull for short-term results.

This strategic alignment is the difference between reactive advertising and proactive growth. It turns your PMax campaign from a mysterious algorithm into a tool you can direct. This level of strategic oversight is central to effective Google Ads management. It’s about using the platform to achieve specific business outcomes, not just chasing a blended ROAS target.

Dynamic asset generation and rotation for PMax

A perfect structure is useless without the right fuel. In Performance Max, that fuel is a constant stream of high-quality, diverse creative assets.

The algorithm needs options. The more headlines, descriptions, images, and videos you provide, the more combinations it can test to find what works. We aim for the maximum number of assets Google allows in each group.

Our process for this is systematic. We don’t just dump 20 images in and hope for the best.

First, we ensure asset diversity. This means a mix of lifestyle shots, product-in-use photos, studio shots on white backgrounds, and user-generated content. For video, we test everything from polished brand videos to simple slideshows made from static images. Even a 15-second video created in Canva can outperform a high-production-value shoot.

Second, we run a disciplined testing and rotation cycle. We typically refresh creative assets every 4-6 weeks. We analyse the performance ratings Google gives each asset, from “Low” to “Good” to “Best.” We remove the low-performers and replace them with new variations. For more on this, Google provides its own creative asset best practices guide.

Third, we use data and tools to inform creation. We analyse top-performing headlines from Meta Ads and use them as a starting point for PMax. We use insights from Google Analytics to understand what imagery on our landing pages drives the most engagement. This isn’t about guesswork; it’s about using data from one channel to improve another. The same principles we apply to our Meta Ads management work here. Good creative is good creative, regardless of the platform.

Feeding the algorithm is an ongoing job. The moment your assets go stale, performance begins to dip. A structured asset refresh process is non-negotiable for long-term PMax success.

Integrating audience signals into your asset group structure

Audience signals are your way of pointing Google’s automation in the right direction. They are not strict targeting, but rather strong suggestions. Using them correctly within our 3-tier structure makes the entire system more intelligent.

We tailor audience signals to the specific goal of each asset group tier.

For Tier 1 (Foundational) groups, we use broader signals. This includes in-market audiences for the product category (e.g., “Skincare Enthusiasts”) and affinity audiences. The goal is reach and discovery, so we give Google a wide playing field.

For Tier 2 (Product Specific) groups, the signals become much sharper. This is where first-party data is king. We connect customer lists from Klaviyo, such as “Customers who purchased Product X but not Product Y.” We build custom segments based on users who have searched for specific competitor brand names or highly specific long-tail keywords. The signal tells Google, “Find more people who look exactly like this.”

For Tier 3 (Promotional) groups, we lean heavily on remarketing signals. This includes all website visitors from the last 30 days, cart abandoners, and past purchasers. We are targeting users who are already familiar with the brand and are most likely to convert on an offer.

The quality of your audience signals, especially your first-party data, is directly linked to your campaign’s performance. This is why having accurate conversion tracking is so critical. Without clean data, you’re sending fuzzy signals to the algorithm. Boosting Conversion Accuracy with things like Enhanced Conversions is the first step to creating powerful, effective audience signals.

We regularly review and refine these signals. We analyse the insights Google provides on which audience segments are performing best and use that information to adjust our signals for the next cycle.

Implementing and optimising your PMax asset groups strategy

Putting this framework into practice requires a methodical approach. It’s not something you can switch on overnight.

Here’s a simplified version of the process we follow.

Audit and Plan: We start by analysing the existing PMax setup. We then map out the new 3-tier structure based on the brand’s product catalogue, margins, and marketing calendar. We decide which product categories deserve their own Tier 2 group.
Build the Foundation: We create the Tier 1 Foundational asset group first. This gets the ‘always-on’ brand messaging live and collecting data. We ensure it has a full suite of high-quality, evergreen creative.
Layer in Specifics: Next, we build out the top 3-5 Tier 2 product-specific asset groups. Each gets its own filtered product feed and highly tailored creative and audience signals. We don’t try to build 20 at once. We start with the most important ones.
Prepare for Promotions: We create templates for Tier 3 promotional groups. When a sale is coming up, we can quickly duplicate the template, add the specific offer creative, and set the dates.

Once live, monitoring becomes key. We don’t just look at the campaign-level ROAS. We go into the “Asset groups” tab and analyse the performance of each one individually. We look for outliers. Is one product category driving all the profit? Is another wasting spend? This data tells us where to allocate more budget.

We also watch the asset performance ratings. If a new creative set in our “Protein Powders” group is rated “Best” by Google, we’ll take that learning and apply it to the creative for our “Vitamins” group.

This iterative process of building, monitoring, and optimising is how you achieve sustained growth. It’s how we’ve been able to deliver consistent our results for clients across dozens of industries. It takes discipline, but it works.

This framework turns Performance Max from a gamble into a predictable growth engine. It requires more upfront strategic work than a single asset group, but the clarity, control, and performance it delivers are worth the effort.