Google Ads quietly unlocks Merchant Center videos for Performance Max

Google’s new Merchant Center video integration gives PMax advertisers faster setup, stronger product relevance, and scalable video performance.

Google is rolling out a new Performance Max beta that lets advertisers pull video assets directly from Merchant Center — a small tweak with big implications for retail and e-commerce.

How it works. Google Ads will now:

  • Auto-surface product-associated videos from Merchant Center during PMax setup
  • Shorten creative workflows for retailers and e-commerce teams
  • Improve product-to-creative alignment, increasing ad relevance
  • Boost performance, especially for large SKU catalogs
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Why we care. This update removes a friction point in PMax: getting high-quality, product-relevant video into campaigns. By auto-pulling videos from Merchant Center, Google is tightening the link between inventory and creative, which typically translates to higher relevance, stronger engagement, and better performance.

For brands with large SKU counts, this dramatically speeds up workflow and ensures video coverage at scale — something that was previously difficult and resource-heavy to achieve.

The big picture. Google has been rapidly expanding PMax’s creative pipeline — from social video imports to this new Merchant Center integration — signaling a broader push to make PMax more plug-and-play for commerce-heavy advertisers.

First seen. This update was first spotted by senior performance marketing executive, Rakshit Shetty who shared his view of the option on LinkedIn.

The bottom line. A subtle update, but a meaningful win for brands running eCommerce at scale.


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About the Author

Anu Adegbola

Anu Adegbola has been Paid Media Editor of Search Engine Land since 2024. She covers paid search, paid social, retail media, video and more.

In 2008, Anu started her career delivering digital marketing campaigns (mostly but not exclusively Paid Search) by building strategies, maximising ROI, automating repetitive processes and bringing efficiency from every part of marketing departments through inspiring leadership both on agency, client and marketing tech side. Outside editing Search Engine Land article she is the founder of PPC networking event - PPC Live and host of weekly podcast PPC Live The Podcast.

She is also an international speaker with some of the stages she has presented on being SMX (US, UK, Munich, Berlin), Friends of Search (Amsterdam, NL), brightonSEO, The Marketing Meetup, HeroConf (PPC Hero), SearchLove, BiddableWorld, SESLondon, PPC Chat Live, AdWorld Experience (Bologna, IT) and more.