How do I use image assets in Google Ads to improve lead generation?

1. Technical Dimensions and Aspect Ratios

To ensure your images serve across all Google placements, you must upload two mandatory aspect ratios:

• Square (1:1): Minimum size is 300x300 pixels (recommended size is 1200x1200 pixels). This is the most common thumbnail format shown on mobile searches.
• Landscape (1.91:1): Minimum size is 600x314 pixels (recommended size is 1200x628 pixels). This format is displayed on desktop and native search placements.

Always upload high-quality PNG or JPG files, keeping file sizes under 5MB.

2. Navigating Google's Strict Image Policies

Google rejects image assets that do not meet their quality and branding guidelines:

• No Text or Logo Overlays: Do not place call-to-actions, pricing, or company logos on top of your photos. The image must be a clean, unedited photo.
• No Collages: Do not combine multiple photos into a single split-screen asset.
• High Quality Only: Images must not be blurry, pixelated, or heavily cropped. Keep the main subject centered, as Google's automated cropping can clip edges.

3. Choosing High-Converting Visuals

Generic stock photos of people in business suits shaking hands convert poorly because users recognize them immediately.

Instead, use real, contextual assets:

• For B2B Software/SaaS: Upload clean screenshots of your application dashboard showing charts, graphs, or code blocks. This validates the product's quality instantly.
• For Local Service Businesses: Show your company's branded trucks, technicians in uniform at a job site, or clean before-and-after results (e.g. clean commercial carpets).
• For E-commerce: Use high-resolution, single-product shots against clean, contrasting background colors.

When preparing images, keep in mind that Google's algorithm may automatically crop or mask sections to fit different grid formats on secondary display networks. Center your subject and maintain a safe margin around the borders. Do not upload photos with important details near the edges, ensuring your visual branding remains clean across all desktop, mobile, and partner page layouts.

4. Designing for Crops You Cannot Control

An image asset is not shown as you uploaded it. Google crops the same file to landscape, square and portrait depending on the placement, and a composition that works at 1.91:1 frequently loses its subject entirely at 1:1. Designers who lay out to the widest ratio and let the platform handle the rest are the reason so many ads show a headless person or half a product.

• Keep the subject centred within the middle square of the frame, and treat the outer thirds as expendable.
• Upload each ratio separately rather than relying on automatic cropping, and preview every one before publishing.
• Avoid text inside the image. It survives no crop reliably, and overlaid text is a common disapproval trigger in its own right.

5. Choosing Images for Service Businesses

Image assets are straightforward for products and awkward for services, where there is nothing photogenic to photograph. The default response is a stock photograph of a smiling team in a meeting room, which is visually identical to what every competitor uploaded and communicates nothing about the specific business.

Photograph the work rather than the concept: an actual site, actual equipment, the actual premises, the actual people who will answer the phone. It reads as real because it is, and for a local service business a recognisable location outperforms a polished abstraction by a wide margin. Where genuinely nothing exists to photograph, a clean branded graphic with the logo and a single strong colour is a better choice than generic stock — it at least builds recognition across placements, which a photograph of strangers in a meeting room cannot do.