How to Set Up Ads on Gmail in 2026: A Step-by-Step Guide for Online Stores

You can’t create a “Gmail campaign” in Google Ads any more. Gmail ads now run inside a Demand Gen campaign: you create the campaign, open the ad group’s Channels setting, choose Let me choose, and tick only Gmail.

That’s the short answer. The longer one matters, because most guides that rank for this question still describe a setup that stopped working years ago (a Display campaign targeting mail.google.com). Below is the setup that works today, plus what I see in the 12 online stores whose Gmail ads I manage. In those accounts, Gmail averaged a 2.3% CTR over the last six months.

Where do Gmail ads appear?

Gmail ads appear at the top of the Promotions and Social tabs in Gmail. They look like an email row in the inbox list: a logo, the advertiser’s name, a headline and an “Ad” label. When someone clicks, the ad opens into a larger creative with images, text and a button to your site (PPC Land).

A few things to know before you start:

• Only consumer Gmail accounts see them. Google Workspace (business) inboxes don’t show ads.
• They’re not available as a separate campaign. Standalone Gmail campaigns stopped serving on 28 June 2022, and Discovery campaigns were upgraded to Demand Gen in early 2024 (PPC Land). The full story is in what replaced AdWords Gmail Sponsored Promotions.
• They look different in the US and in Europe. More on that below, because it changes what results you can expect.

How do you set up Gmail ads, step by step?

You set up Gmail ads by creating a Demand Gen campaign and limiting one of its ad groups to the Gmail channel. Here are the steps in order.

1. Make sure conversion tracking works

Demand Gen bids on conversions, so it needs to see them. Check that purchases are tracked once per order, with the real order value, before you spend anything. If you run an online store, track purchase value as well as the number of orders: you’ll want to bid on value later.

2. Create a new Demand Gen campaign

In Google Ads, click + New campaign, pick your goal (usually Sales), and choose Demand Gen as the campaign type.

3. Choose bidding and budget

Demand Gen can bid for clicks, conversions or conversion value (Google Ads Help). For an online store with enough purchase data, conversion value is the one to aim for. If you use a target CPA, Google recommends a daily budget of at least 10 times that target (Google Ads Help).

If you’re not sure what return you need, work out your break-even ROAS first. It’s the number every Gmail result should be judged against.

4. Set locations and languages

Set the countries you ship to and the languages your customers read. If you sell in both the US and Europe, consider separate campaigns. Gmail ads behave very differently on each side of the Atlantic (see below).

5. Limit the ad group to Gmail

This is the step most guides miss. Channel selection is set at the ad group level (Google Ads Help):

1. Open the ad group settings and find the Channels panel.
2. Choose Let me choose instead of All Google channels.
3. Tick Gmail and untick everything else (YouTube, Discover, Maps and the Google Display Network).

6. Choose your audience

Pick the audience for the ad group: your customer lists, website visitors, or custom segments built from search terms and competitor URLs. Check the estimated reach in the right-hand panel. A Gmail-only ad group with a narrow audience can be too small to serve.

7. Create the ads

Upload images, write headlines and descriptions, and add your logo and business name. Gmail only shows image ads and product feed ads; video doesn’t run there. The specs are in the formats section below.

8. Publish, then give it time to learn

Demand Gen needs time and conversions to learn. Changing bids, audiences and ads every few days restarts that learning, so set a review date and stick to it.

Why should Gmail have its own ad group?

Because otherwise Google decides how much of your money goes to Gmail, and you can’t judge Gmail on its own results. I always run Gmail-only ad groups and keep each placement separate. In my accounts, Gmail gets between 10% and 40% of the Demand Gen budget, depending on the account. That range is exactly why I want to set it myself.

To be fair, Google recommends the opposite: leave all channels on and judge the campaign as a whole, because its systems shift budget to wherever conversions are cheapest (PPC Land). That can work for a single big campaign. But Gmail, YouTube and Discover reach people in different situations and need different creative. Mixing them makes it hard to see which one is earning.

Which ad formats work in Gmail?

Gmail shows two formats: single image ads (including carousels) and product feed ads from your Merchant Center. Video ads, and ads that combine video with a product feed, don’t serve in Gmail (PPC Land).

Asset	Spec
Landscape image	1.91:1, minimum 600×314
Square image	1:1, minimum 300×300
Portrait image	4:5, minimum 480×600
Images per ad	Up to 20
Headlines	Up to 5, 40 characters each
Descriptions	Up to 5, 90 characters each
Business name	25 characters
Logo	1:1, shown as a circle

Specs as listed by PPC Land from Google’s image asset guidelines, September 2026. Use 1200px versions where you can.

Two details catch people out:

• The logo is cropped to a circle. Gmail shows square logos as circles, so anything in the corners disappears. Keep the logo centred with space around it.
• The headline does most of the work. In the collapsed inbox row, people see your name, your logo and one headline. That line decides whether anyone clicks.

What works for my stores: image ads usually do a bit better than product feed ads, and images with text on them work well. The image has to make sense in the half-second someone looks at the inbox. Above all, test your copy. In Gmail the headline is the ad, so I test headlines more than anything else.

How much do Gmail ads cost?

Gmail ads cost what you bid, and the price depends heavily on your industry. Across my store accounts I have examples below $1 per click and examples above $5 per click, so any single “average Gmail CPC” you read online should be treated with suspicion.

What you pay for is worth understanding. Google charges for the first click, the one that opens the ad in the inbox. Clicks from the opened ad through to your website don’t cost extra (PPC Land). That means a click in your Gmail report isn’t the same as a website visit. Compare clicks with sessions in your analytics before judging the traffic.

Click-through rates are more predictable than costs. Over the last six months my 12 store accounts averaged a 2.3% CTR on Gmail, and 80% of accounts stayed within 20% of that average, up or down.

Do Gmail ads work the same in Europe as in the US?

No. In the US, a Gmail ad opens and reads like a real email. In Europe it doesn’t: the format is more limited and stays visibly an ad. In my experience, Gmail ads work much better in the US for exactly that reason.

The reason is legal. In 2021 the EU Court of Justice ruled that inbox ads that look like real emails count as direct marketing, which needs the recipient’s prior consent (case C-102/20). In September 2025, France’s data protection authority fined Google €325 million over Gmail inbox ads and cookies (PPC Land). Google’s Help Center documents modified Gmail ad formats for the EU and nearby countries.

What this means in practice:

• Don’t copy US benchmarks into a European plan. A CTR or ROAS from a US case study won’t carry over.
• If you sell in both regions, split the campaigns so a weaker European result doesn’t hide a strong US one, or the other way round.
• In Europe, make the collapsed ad do the selling. The headline and image carry more weight when the opened ad can do less.

How do Gmail ads compare with YouTube and Discover?

In most of my accounts, Gmail converts a bit worse than YouTube and a bit better than Discover. But conversion rate alone is the wrong comparison, because the three channels play different roles in the funnel.

YouTube is where people watch, and it builds demand. Discover catches people scrolling through content. Gmail reaches people in the inbox, where they’re already reading offers from other stores. That makes Gmail a natural place for promotions, returning-customer offers and remarketing. Judge each channel against its job and against your break-even ROAS.

How do you see Gmail results in Google Ads?

Open the campaign, ad group or ads view and segment the report by network, then look at the Gmail row (Google Ads Help). If you followed the setup above, the Gmail-only ad group already gives you clean numbers without segmenting.

Why aren’t my Gmail ads showing?

Gmail ads usually don’t show for one of these reasons:

• The ad group only has video. Gmail doesn’t serve video, so give the ad group image or product feed ads.
• Your products fall into a sensitive category. Restricted categories such as alcohol and gambling are mostly limited to YouTube in Demand Gen (Google Ads Help).
• The audience is too small. A narrow customer list plus a Gmail-only ad group can leave nobody to show the ad to. Check the reach estimate in the ad group settings.
• The budget is too low for your bid. If you bid on target CPA with a budget below about 10 times that target, the campaign struggles to spend.
• You’re checking from a work account. Workspace inboxes don’t show ads, so you won’t see your own ad there.