Google Ads Image Sizes for E-Commerce Sellers 2026: Performance Max, Demand Gen and the 500x500 Merchant Center Deadline

Most sellers treat Google as one channel. It is really three, and each one wants your product images at different sizes. Your Merchant Center feed images power free listings and Shopping ads. Your Performance Max asset groups need landscape, square and portrait crops. Demand Gen adds a 9:16 vertical on top of that. Upload the wrong ratio and Google either crops your product in half or refuses to serve the placement at all.

There is also a hard deadline coming. From 31 January 2027, Google enforces a 500 x 500 pixel minimum on every Merchant Center product image, and Merchant Center has already been flagging undersized images since 14 April 2026. If your catalogue still runs on 250-pixel supplier thumbnails, you have a fixed window to sort it out.

This guide covers every image spec you actually need across Google's e-commerce surfaces in 2026, plus the crop rules that decide whether your product survives the placement.

Merchant Center feed images: the 500 x 500 deadline

Feed images are the ones in your product data, referenced by the image_link and additional_image_link attributes. They appear in Shopping ads, free listings, the Shopping tab and increasingly in AI-generated shopping results.

Two things matter here. First, the new floor applies to your additional images too, not just the main one, so a catalogue that passes on hero shots can still fail on gallery images. Second, Google has said it will automatically optimise some sub-500 images to meet the standard and flag them under Needs Attention. Do not rely on that. Machine upscaling of a 250-pixel supplier image produces soft, mushy detail that costs you clicks even when it technically passes.

What gets your feed images disapproved

The image policy has not softened. Common causes of disapproval:

• Promotional text overlays — "Sale", "Free Shipping", "New", price stickers, discount badges. Any of these on the image itself is a violation.
• Watermarks and logos placed over the product, including stock-photo attribution.
• Placeholder or generic images — a logo, a "coming soon" graphic, or an illustration standing in for the real product.
• Borders and collages on the main image.
• Products that fill too little of the frame. Aim for the product to occupy roughly 75 to 90 per cent of the image.

Performance Max: the asset group specs

Performance Max pulls product data from your feed, but the asset group is separate. Those images run on Display, Discover, Gmail and YouTube placements, and Google needs multiple aspect ratios to fill all of them.

Every image asset is capped at 5 MB (5120 KB) and must be JPG, PNG or static GIF. The bare minimum for a servable asset group is one landscape plus one square image, but that is a floor, not a target. Google's own guidance is at least four landscape, four square and two portrait images per asset group.

Text assets sit alongside: 3 to 15 headlines at 30 characters, 1 to 5 long headlines at 90 characters, and 2 to 5 descriptions at 90 characters. Video is optional, but Google will auto-generate one from your images if you leave it empty, so upload your own if you care what it looks like. YouTube video assets accept 16:9, 1:1 and 9:16, minimum 10 seconds, up to 15 per asset group.

The 80 per cent centre rule

This is the spec that catches people out. Google crops your image differently for every placement, and the requirement is that your content sits within the centre 80 per cent of the frame. A product photographed tight to the edges will get its handle, spout or heel sliced off in half the placements you serve.

The practical fix is to shoot or crop with deliberate margin, then generate each ratio from the same wide master file rather than stretching a single crop to fit. If you are producing landscape, square and portrait versions of the same shot, a batch tool like PixelPrep will output all three ratios from one upload with consistent padding, which is considerably faster than re-cropping by hand for every asset group.

Text overlays in asset images

Unlike feed images, Performance Max assets do allow overlays. But Google layers its own headline and description on top of your image on Display placements, so heavy text competes with Google's text and both become unreadable. The official recommendation is to supply at least one clean image with no overlay for each aspect ratio, giving the system usable inventory when it needs to add its own copy.

One more detail worth knowing: logos with a transparent background may be rendered on a white background, so check that your logo still reads correctly when it is not sitting on your brand colour.

Demand Gen: add the vertical

Demand Gen runs on Discover, Gmail, YouTube in-feed and YouTube Shorts. It supports the same three ratios as Performance Max plus 9:16 vertical for Shorts placements, with the same 5 MB cap and JPG, PNG or static GIF formats.

To reach the strongest asset coverage rating, Google wants three images in each of landscape, square and portrait, plus video assets including 9:16. Demand Gen product feeds also accept animated GIF and APNG, capped at 5 MB, but only in square format.

One master file, four outputs

The efficient workflow is to stop thinking in terms of Google's ratios during the shoot and start with a single high-resolution master per product, then derive everything from it:

1. Shoot or source at 2000 x 2000 px or larger, square, product centred, generous margin on all sides.
2. Export the feed image at 1500 x 1500 px, JPG, clean white background, no text, no watermark, product filling 75 to 90 per cent of the frame.
3. Generate the ad ratios from the same master: 1200 x 628, 1200 x 1200, 960 x 1200 and 1080 x 1920, each keeping the product in the centre 80 per cent.
4. Compress to under 5 MB for ad assets. In practice a well-optimised 1200 x 1200 JPG lands around 150 to 400 KB, far below the cap.
5. Keep one clean version per ratio with no overlay, and only add branded variants on top of that base set.

Doing it in this order matters. Sellers who crop for one channel first and then try to adapt that crop for the others end up with portrait assets built from a landscape file, which means either bars down the sides or a product with its top and bottom missing.

Pre-flight checklist

• Every feed image, main and additional, is at least 500 x 500 px — ideally 1500 x 1500 px
• No promotional text, price badges, watermarks or borders on feed images
• Feed images under 16 MB; ad assets under 5 MB
• Performance Max asset group has at least 4 landscape, 4 square and 2 portrait images
• Square logo at 1200 x 1200 px; landscape logo at 1200 x 300 px if brand guidelines are off
• All subject matter inside the centre 80 per cent of every crop
• At least one overlay-free image per aspect ratio
• 9:16 vertical assets added for Demand Gen and Shorts
• Merchant Center Needs Attention panel checked for undersized-image warnings

The 500 x 500 enforcement date is the one to diarise. Warnings are already appearing, enforcement lands on 31 January 2027, and a catalogue-wide reshoot or re-export takes longer than most sellers expect. Audit your feed for undersized images now, while a warning is still just a warning.