Create Discovery campaigns

Discovery campaigns let you share your brand's story with people across Google's feeds when they're open to discovering new products and services.

• Expansive reach: Reach up to 3 billion customers across the YouTube Home and Watch Next feeds, Discover*, and the Gmail Promotions and Social tabs using a single campaign.
• Rich and relevant creative: Inspire consumers as you showcase your brand or products in visually engaging images, rendered natively across Google properties.
• Drive action with the right audience: Combine this incredible reach and powerful creative canvas with Google’s understanding of intent to anticipate what your customers want and drive results.

This article explains how to create Discovery campaigns. Learn more about Discovery campaigns

*Discover is currently unavailable for consumers in France and Germany.

Before you begin

• Gather your ad's assets like headlines, descriptions, images, and logos. To drive better performance, select your highest-quality image assets, such as brand and inspirational imagery featuring minimal text and effective lighting. You can also repurpose top-performing image assets and messaging from existing campaigns on other platforms, like email or social.
• Make sure that you have sitewide tagging enabled in the account. Make sure that you’ve set up conversion tracking and that you meet the conversion-based eligibility requirements.
• You must comply with our Personalized advertising policies.
• Make sure that you have a sufficient daily budget to account for at least 10 times your target CPA bid.

Instructions

Step 1: Set up your campaign

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. On the page menu on the left, click Campaigns.
3. Click the plus button then select New campaign.
4. Choose a marketing objective of either 'Sales', 'Leads', 'Website traffic', or 'No goal'.
   • To create a Discovery campaign, you will need to select one conversion goal for your campaign. Your campaign will optimize for that goal. 
5. Select the Discovery campaign type.
6. Click Continue.
7. Under Discovery Conversion Selection, you will choose one conversion goal to better reach your Discovery campaign's sales objective.
8. Pick your geographic and language targeting for this campaign.

9. Select your bidding strategy and enter your average daily budget. Learn more about Automated bidding
   • Conversions: If you select the checkbox for “Set a target cost per action”, the campaign will try to meet the Target CPA you enter. Learn more About Target CPA bidding
   • Conversion value (This is currently in beta. Contact your Google representative to get started): If you select the checkbox for “Set a target return on ad spend”, the campaign will try to meet the Target ROAS you enter. Learn more About Target ROAS bidding
10. Click Next.
11. Select your audiences. You can add the following audience segment targeting options: custom intent audiences, your data, and in-market segments.

12. Click Next.

Create your Discovery ads

1. Set up your single-image ad
2. Set up your multi-image carousel ad

Step 2a: Set up your single-image ad

Upload assets to create your first Discovery ad

1. Navigate to your Discovery campaign.
2. On the page menu on the left, click Ads & Extensions.
3. Click the plus button then select Discovery ad.
4. Enter your assets.

Discovery ad asset specifications

   

Headline (required)	Your headlines are the first line of your ad. Write headlines that make sense combined with any of your descriptions, images, and landing pages.
Description (required)	Your descriptions add to your headline and invite people to take action. Write descriptions that can be combined with any of your headlines, images, and landing pages.
Images (required)	To get the greatest reach, upload multiple 1.91:1 landscape images. Select images that work well with your logo and can be combined with any of your headlines, any of your descriptions, and your landing page. Supported file types are JPG, PNG, and static GIF. You can crop the uploaded images to the required aspect ratios right after choosing the images.
Business name (required)	Only one business name can be provided for a single creative. It can be up to 25 characters.
Logos (required)	Logos will be rounded off in ad preview and live rendering on some of the properties. Upload logos that combine well with any of your headlines, descriptions, and images, and center them. The most common non-.gif formats are accepted.
Final URL (required)	Default landing page that customers will reach on clicking the ad.
Call-to-Action text	If set to “Automatic”, Google Ads will automatically select the call-to-action language to optimize for the best performance.

Learn about the creative asset quality guidelines for Discovery ads

If you'd like to generate a second set of asset pairings, you can create a new ad later on. The assets you provide in each ad are used interchangeably only within that ad.

Step 2b: Set up your multi-image carousel ad

Select images or Carousel to create your first Discovery ad

1. Navigate to your Discovery campaign.
2. On the page menu on the left, click Ads & Extensions.
3. Click the plus button then select Discovery ad or Discovery Carousel ad.
4. Enter your asset.

Discovery Carousel ad asset specifications

   

Headline (required)	Your headlines are the first line of your ad. You can enter a headline to align with each image.
Description (required)	Your descriptions add to your headline and invite people to take action. You won't be able to write descriptions for each image; instead write descriptions that can be combined with any of your headlines, images and landing pages.
Card images (min 2 cards, max 10)	Ads won't be saved if not all cards have images with the same aspect ratios. Note that the creative will show cards in the order created and shown in the preview tool
Logos (required)	Logos could be rounded off in ad preview and live rendering on some of the properties. Upload logos that combine well with any of your headlines, descriptions and images, and center them. Most common non-.gif formats are accepted.
Business Name (required)	Only one business name can be provided for a single creative. It can be up to 25 characters.
Final URL (required)	Default landing page that customers will reach on clicking the ad. You can provide a specific landing page for each image.
Mobile URL (optional)	Mobile landing page that customers will reach on clicking the ad from a mobile device.
Call-to-Action text	If set to “Automatic”, Google Ads will automatically select the call-to-action language to optimize for the best performance.

Learn about the creative asset quality guidelines for Discovery ads

Step 2c: Set up your lead forms extension (optional)

Lead form extensions help you generate leads by letting people submit their information in a form directly in your ad. Learn how to implement lead form extensions.

Step 3: Allow 2 weeks for a “Learning” period before making new changes

After you make a change to your bid strategy, there may be minor performance fluctuations as Google Ads optimizes your bids. To indicate this, your bid strategy status may be labeled as “Learning”. You can hover over the status to learn why your bid strategy has the “Learning” status. It’s recommended that you allow two weeks for the “Learning” period to elapse before making bidding changes.

Related links

• About Discovery campaigns
• Manage your Discovery campaigns: budget, targeting & reporting
• About asset reporting for Discovery ads & campaigns
• Discovery ads format requirements
• Inspire consumers to action with Discovery campaigns