An advertiser's guide to message assets for Google's Search ads

Welcome to message assets for Search ads. This new asset type helps businesses connect with customers directly from Search ads through a rich chat conversation using Google’s Business Messages.

This is the digital gateway to helpful one-on-one conversations between businesses and people in their moment of need. Message assets pair a qualified customer's Search intent with a chat experience to increase sales, capture leads, drive loyalty, and improve customer satisfaction. Using Google’s Business Messages, you can meet customers directly where they start their purchase journeys.

When you run a Google Ads campaign with message assets, a "Chat" prompt appears on your ad. This allows customers to connect with your business directly from the ad that interests them.

Select the “Leads from messages” conversion goal

When you select "Leads from messages" as the only conversion goal of your campaign, the "Chat" prompt will appear in your ad's headline. Tapping "Chat" will lead a customer directly to the chat experience.

Message leads goal only
Message leads goal only

If you select "Leads from messages" as a goal in addition to other conversion goals, the "Chat" prompt can appear either in your ad's headline or below your ad’s headline and description, depending on which format is predicted to perform better.

Message leads and other goals or other goals only
Message leads and other goals, or other goals only

If you create a message asset without selecting "Leads from messages" as your conversion goal, the "Chat" prompt can appear below your headline and description when it's predicted to improve your performance.

Chai tea delivery with business messages

Make it easy for customers to connect with your business

When users customers tap "Chat" from the ad, it opens up Google's Business Messages experience on their Android device.

The customer is immediately greeted by welcome message(s), which can contain rich text, images, and card carousels, as well as conversation starters in the form of text chips. This greeting invites the customer to respond, which will initiate a chat session with the live or digital agent.

Ready to get started with message assets for Search ads?

To create ads with message assets, you first need to set up your chat experience in Google’s Business Messages. You can do this by working with a trusted partner of Google’s Business Messages or by building your business’s chat experience yourself.

Work with a trusted partner

Build the chat experience myself

Get started by working with one of Google’s Business Messages's partners

When you work with a partner to manage your chat experience, they will develop your “agent” in Business Messages. This agent is the conversational representation of your business. It may be a live agent, a digital agent, or a combination of both.

If you engage a partner, be sure to tell them if you want to link your ad to the default agent experience, which your business may already be using, or if you want to customize the agent's greeting to support a specific ad.

You can provide guidance to your selected partner about any custom greetings you want to pair with your ads. Your in-house ads team or ad agency might provide this guidance, given their familiarity with your campaign.

How to customize the greeting to match your ad

You can work with your partner to define a rich, custom greeting for each ad you want to run. Custom greetings welcome customers into a conversation that is directly aligned with the ad. You can define as many greetings as you like and then pair individual greetings with individual ads. When you configure your campaign, you will add a link from your partner to your message asset in Google Ads. This link pairs the message asset with a particular greeting, which will appear when a customer taps "Chat" from the Search ad.

To set up custom greetings, do these three things and share the details with your partner:

Name your greeting

This name is for internal purposes only and won't appear in the chat experience. We suggest choosing a name and/or number that matches your campaign. Using a common label for the greeting, the message asset, and the campaign will help to ensure a smooth collaboration between you and your partner.

Create welcome message(s)

You need to define at least one and up to three custom welcome messages for a single greeting experience. For each message, your partner needs to know what type of message you want to use and the details to include.

You can choose from the following message types:

  • Text: The simplest welcome messages are made of text. If emojis match your business's tone of voice, they can make the text more engaging.

    Welcome message text
  • Rich text: This welcome message will support text with bold and italic formatting, hyperlinks, and line breaks.

    Welcome message rich text
  • Image: This welcome message can include an image. Your partner will need the image URL.

    Welcome message image
  • Rich card: The card needs to include media or a title at a minimum, but rich cards can contain any or all of the following elements:

    • Media (JPG, JPEG, or PNG, maximum 5 MB)
    • Media thumbnail (JPG, JPEG, or PNG, maximum 25 KB)
    • Title (maximum 200 characters)
    • Description (maximum 2000 characters)
    • A list of suggested replies and suggested actions in the form of text chips (maximum 4)

    Note about card height: Cards expand vertically to fit their contents. Rich cards have a minimum height of 112 DP and a maximum height of 344 DP. If the contents of a card are not large enough to fill the minimum card height, the card expands and fills the extra height with white space.

    Media in rich cards must fit one of three heights:

    • Short: 112 DP
    • Medium: 168 DP
    • Tall: 264 DP

    If the media doesn't fit the dimensions within the card given the selected height, the media preview is chosen by zooming and cropping the media.

    Welcome message rich card
  • Rich card carousel: When you want the greeting to present a customer with multiple products to choose from, use a rich card carousel. Carousels string together multiple rich cards, allowing customers to compare items. Carousels contain a minimum of two and a maximum of ten rich cards, which scroll horizontally from left to right. Rich cards within carousels must conform to the rich card requirements for content and height listed above.

    Welcome message rich card carousel

Define conversation starters (optional)

Conversation starters are text chips that guide customers to specific questions or journeys that your agent supports. Research shows that conversation starters make the chat more engaging when showing users what they can do. You can add up to five conversation starters (maximum of 35 characters each) to appear after the welcome message(s). Check out these tips for good conversation starters.

Conversations starters

Build your business’s chat experience on Google’s Business Messages

To create a custom chat experience for your ads, you need to configure the Business Messages agent. This agent is the conversational representation of your business. It may be a live agent, a digital agent, or a combination of both.

Most advertisers work with one of Google’s Business Messages's partners to manage the chat experience. However, you also have the option to become a partner by onboarding to Business Messages. This is a good option if your team wants to set up and manage the agent experience for ongoing operations. For example, you might want to integrate Business Messages with your customer service operations, CRM, and other systems.

If your team is ready to build your Business Messages agent, please follow the steps below to complete the partner registration and agent setup process.

Get started

Design the chat experience

Collaborate with your creative team to design the customer journey. This is the sequence of steps and conversational dialog that guide customers from their first click on "Chat" through their final conversion.

Set up greetings for Google Ads

Implement message handling

Create your message assets in Google Ads

Now that your business is set up on Google’s Business Messages and your agent has its default and custom greeting(s), you’re ready to run a Search ad with message assets.

After setting your "Leads from messages" conversion goals, you'll enter a link that connects your message asset to your campaign.

Link your ad to the default agent experience

If you want to use the default greeting for an ad, with no further customizations, ask your partner to send you the default "link for Google Ads."

Link your ad to agent experiences with custom greetings

If you have multiple custom greetings, ask your partner to send you a CSV of all your “links for Google Ads.” For a single custom greeting, request the "link for Google Ads" by referring to the greeting name you set.

The partner will find the links under Advertise -> Links for Google Ads in the Google's Business Communications Developer Console.

Take the link they provide and add it to your message asset in Google Ads. Google uses the information from this link to associate the agent’s default or custom greeting with your ad.

Slider panel

You can load the same link in your web browser to preview the chat experience and confirm it uses the right greeting.

If everything looks good, save your message asset and continue to set up your Search campaign.

Preview: Greeting for Google Ads

Learn more

Get more guidance in the Google Ads Help Center.

Go to Help Center