Performance Max sourced videos: should you turn them off?

Short answer: Performance Max can now run sourced videos. These are videos Google can take from your social media profiles, your landing page or your linked YouTube channel and upload to a Google-owned YouTube channel that shows your logo and business name. They are on by default in new campaigns and may already be active in existing ones, so check every asset group.

What are Performance Max sourced videos?

Sourced videos are videos that Performance Max can use in your ads even if you never uploaded them to the asset group. Google’s help page on sourced videos lists the possible sources as social media platforms, the campaign’s landing page and the YouTube channel linked to your account.

Google uploads the videos to a dedicated YouTube channel that it owns. That channel shows your logo and business name and links to your landing page. To a viewer, it looks like your brand published the video.

There is one safeguard: you have to approve the sources in your video portfolio. That approval is where the real decision gets made, and it is easy to click through it without looking.

Is the setting already on in your account?

For new campaigns, almost certainly. Google’s help page states: “Sourced videos are enabled by default for all new campaigns.” It also says the feature “may have been activated automatically on some existing campaigns as part of a recent platform update.”

Google announced the change on 23 October 2026 and says it is rolling out gradually, so the option may not appear in every account yet. If you cannot see it today, check again in a few weeks, and check it in every campaign you create from now on.

Like other Performance Max defaults, this gives Google more material to work with. Whether that suits your brand is your decision. If you have already worked through how to cap Display spend with channel prioritization add this setting to the same review.

How to turn off sourced videos step by step

The setting is in the asset group settings, so one click per campaign is not enough. A campaign with eight asset groups has eight checkboxes to review.

1. In Google Ads, open the Performance Max campaign.
2. Open the settings of the first asset group.
3. Expand Asset optimization.
4. Clear the Sourced videos checkbox if you do not want Google to use videos from your sources.
5. Repeat this for every asset group in the campaign, then for every other Performance Max campaign.
6. Write down the date and what you changed, so you can compare performance later.

If you decide to keep them on

Then approving sources in your video portfolio is your quality check. Before you approve a source, open it and look at what is actually there, not what you remember posting. Approve only sources where you would be happy to run every piece of content as a paid ad today.

Add it to your launch checklist

The default applies to all new campaigns, so clearing the checkbox in today’s campaigns does nothing for next month’s launch. Add one line to your checklist: “Asset optimization, sourced videos: decided on purpose.”

Which video sources can cause problems?

Each source carries a different risk. This is what I check before approving any of them.

Source	What can go wrong	What to check
Social media profiles	Old promotions, expired discount codes, prices that no longer match the shop, trends that no longer fit the brand	Scroll back through a year of posts and Reels. If you would delete anything, do not approve the source.
Creator, customer or employee videos on your profiles	The people in the video agreed to an organic post, not to paid advertising	Check contracts and consents. If paid use is not covered, keep the source out.
Landing page	Videos of discontinued products, or a video in one language on a page that serves several countries	Open every landing page the campaign uses and look at the embedded videos.
Linked YouTube channel	Old brand films, webinar recordings, tutorials never meant as ads, outdated packaging	Go through the channel’s videos and remove or archive anything that no longer represents the brand.
Any source, in sensitive categories	A spoken sentence in a video can make a health or performance claim your ad copy would never make	For supplements, cosmetics and similar products, turn the setting off by default.

What I see in the accounts I run

In the accounts I run and audit, the risky asset group is rarely the one launched last week. It is the one set up a year ago that has run without edits since, because nobody opens its settings any more. That is exactly where automatic defaults end up.

With Slovak and Czech brands, the social profile is usually run by someone other than the person running the ads. Social content is made to be quick and current: competitions, limited offers, inside jokes. It works for followers who know the context. Shown as an ad to a stranger, the same clip can look outdated or confusing.

Then there are multi-country campaigns. Many EU e-shops run one Performance Max campaign across several countries while their social profile posts in a single language. I have not seen Google explain how sourced videos are matched to a campaign’s language, so until I see otherwise I assume a Slovak-language Reel could end up in a Hungarian campaign.

None of this makes the feature bad. Video is often the asset type small advertisers are missing, and a brand with a clean, current social profile may get usable material without filming anything new. The point is that the decision should be made by you, for each asset group, not left to a default.

When to keep sourced videos on (and when not to)

Keep them on, approving sources one at a time, if:

• the asset group has no video assets and you have no budget to produce them right now;
• your social profiles and YouTube channel contain only current, on-brand content;
• the campaign targets one country in the same language as your content;
• you have the rights to use everything on those channels in paid advertising.

Turn them off if:

• you sell in a category where spoken claims are sensitive, such as supplements, cosmetics or health-related products;
• your brand has strict creative guidelines or every ad needs client approval;
• your profiles include creator content without paid usage rights;
• prices, offers or products in older videos no longer match the shop.

If you are unsure, turn them off in the asset groups that bring most of your revenue and test them in one smaller asset group first. Compare conversions and CPA (cost per acquisition, cost divided by conversions) over periods of the same length before and after the change. Do this only with conversion tracking you trust. If GA4 and Google Ads disagree, fix that first: here are six common reasons GA4 conversions do not match your ads.

What to do first

Today, open every Performance Max asset group and look at the Sourced videos checkbox under Asset optimization. Then decide for each asset group based on what is actually on your social profiles, landing pages and YouTube channel, and add the setting to the launch checklist for new campaigns.

If you want a second pair of eyes on your Performance Max setup, see how I work as a freelance PPC specialist or browse all my PPC and performance marketing services. Email me and I’ll reply within 24 hours.