What are Auto-Generated Assets in Microsoft Ads?
Auto-Generated Assets is a campaign-level setting in Microsoft Advertising. When enabled, Microsoft automatically creates additional headlines and descriptions for your Responsive Search Ads using content from your ads' final URLs, landing pages, and existing inputs.
The goal is to increase ad variations and match more search queries using automation. However, auto-generation can compromise message control, brand voice, and campaign precision when over-used or used without oversight.
Why should I turn it off?
Auto-Generated Assets may seem like a quick win, but they can introduce risks and reduce performance in several ways:
Generated copy often lacks distinctiveness or brand nuance. Your unique selling points may be sidelined in favour of generic wording.
You may lose control over what messages appear in each ad. Important core messaging (promo, brand voice, tone) might be overshadowed by auto-generated text.
Testing becomes murkier. If the system is mixing your assets with auto-ones, it’s harder to know which headline or description drove performance.
It can inflate asset counts and combinations, but many don’t perform well. This adds complexity without reliable payoff.
How does this Improvement work?
Every day, Opteo checks if your Microsoft campaigns have Auto-Generated Assets switched on. If they do, you'll get an Improvement recommendation to switch it off.
We display when we first detected auto-generated assets for the campaign. For example - “This campaign was first found to have auto-generated assets enabled 17 days ago.”
In one click, you can disable this setting, so that only the headlines & descriptions you wrote are used.
When is Auto-Generated Assets most harmful?
Here are situations where this setting often causes issues:
High competition or high CPC keywords where messaging needs to be tightly aligned to buyer intent.
Brand campaigns where consistency of voice, tone, or particular messaging is essential.
Promo or product release campaigns where specific details (dates, offers, specs) matter.
When ad groups are granular or focused; auto assets may conflict with very specific keyword-driven angles.
When you rely heavily on asset-level feedback to optimise creatives; auto assets dilute what you can learn.
When might Auto-Generated Assets be okay?
There are some scenarios where enabling this setting could have value:
Campaigns that are light on manually-crafted headlines or descriptions, where auto assets fill gaps.
Early stage campaigns where you need variants to test quickly, and willing to accept trade-offs.
Broader/awareness campaigns where messaging precision is less critical than reach.
If you think this setting is helping and the performance is acceptable, you can choose to dismiss the Improvement instead.