Ad Strength on Google Ads – Everything You Need to Know

Ad Strength in Google Ads is a diagnostic evaluation tool that measures how well your ad creative aligns with Google’s best practices for responsiveness, relevance, and diversity. It provides advertisers with real-time feedback ranging from “Poor” to “Excellent” and actionable recommendations to improve ad asset quality.

Although Ad Strength does not directly impact Ad Rank or the ad auction algorithm, it serves as a vital indicator for creative optimization. It guides marketers to craft stronger, more varied, and audience-relevant ads. Google reinforces this tool by expanding its guidance and best practices as part of broader AI-driven updates in the platform’s ad assets experience. Understanding and using Ad Strength effectively can contribute to better overall campaign performance, higher relevancy signals, and improved engagement metrics.

Content:

• What Is Ad Strength in Google Ads?
• Why Ad Strength Matters for Your Campaign Success?
• Best Practices for Improving Your Ad Strength
• How to Get Started With Google Ads?

What Is Ad Strength in Google Ads?

Ad Strength is a quality rating system inside Google Ads that evaluates your ad’s creative assets against Google’s best-practice standards. The Ad Strength acts as a guideline rather than a strict performance metric. Unlike Ad Rank (which determines ad auction outcomes), Ad Strength is a feedback mechanism aimed at helping advertisers understand how complete and compelling their ad assets are relative to what Google’s automated systems prefer. It highlights gaps such as insufficient headlines, repetitive messaging, or missing keywords that could make your ads more adaptable to different search queries.

Ad Strength is increasingly significant because Google’s AI-driven systems rely on creative asset quality to automatically test and serve the best combinations. Stronger asset sets help the platform create more relevant ad combinations for different users. However, it’s essential to differentiate the diagnostic nature of Ad Strength from performance metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, or return on ad spend (ROAS), which are tied to real campaign outcomes rather than asset completeness.

Why Ad Strength Matters for Your Campaign Success?

At first glance, Ad Strength might seem like a suggestive score that “feels nice to improve,” but it matters for several practical reasons when optimizing Google Ads campaigns.

First, Ad Strength encourages diversity and relevance in your ad creative. By prompting you to include multiple headlines, unique descriptions, and relevant keywords, it increases the chance that Google’s automation will find combinations that resonate with real user queries. Google’s internal documentation indicates that better Ad Strength can lead to more effective messaging across auctions, which can indirectly support stronger engagement and conversions.

Second, Google’s best practice guides emphasize using Ad Strength as a benchmark for asset readiness, especially in asset-driven campaigns like Performance Max. The updated guidance outlines recommended counts for headlines, descriptions, images, and videos to ensure your campaign has enough creative variety for machine learning to optimize effectively.

Third, while Ad Strength isn’t a direct ranking factor, it correlates strongly with elements that do impact performance such as relevance and creative quality. Ads with Good or Excellent strength generally offer more varied and compelling messaging, which can improve user engagement signals like CTR and perceived relevance.

Ultimately, Ad Strength matters because it helps advertisers prepare ads that are better aligned with Google’s machine-learning systems, enabling smarter automation and potentially stronger campaign outcomes when paired with solid strategy and measurement.

Best Practices for Improving Your Ad Strength

If you want to strategically improve your Ad Strength score without just chasing a number, there are several practical steps you can take that also benefit real performance.

1. Increase the Variety of Headlines and Descriptions: Google recommends uploading a broad set of unique headlines and descriptions. This expands the pool of combinations machine learning can test.
2. Avoid Repetition: Repetitive text doesn’t score well on diversity. Ensure each headline and description brings unique value or messaging to avoid penalties in the Ad Strength evaluation.
3. Incorporate Relevant Keywords: Including high-value keywords in your ad assets helps with relevance and ensures the creative aligns with user queries. However, strong relevance still depends on contextual placement and messaging, not just keyword stuffing.
4. Utilize All Available Assets: For asset-based campaign formats, use images, videos, and sitelinks where appropriate. These additional assets are becoming part of Google’s strength evaluations, especially for Performance Max and rich media campaigns.
5. Test and Refine Based on Business Metrics: A high Ad Strength score doesn’t automatically guarantee better ROI. Compare ad sets with different strength ratings to see real performance differences in conversions, CTR, and ROAS, then adjust your strategy based on those results rather than the score alone.

How to Get Started With Google Ads?

Google Ads is a powerful advertising platform that can transform your business by connecting you with potential customers at the right time. Whether you’re aiming to boost sales, increase website traffic, or build brand awareness, Google Ads offers the tools to achieve your goals.

However, success requires a strategic approach, continuous learning, and regular optimization. With the right planning and execution, Google Ads can be a game-changer in your digital marketing strategy. And this is what we do at SS&T Digital. 👇