Creative Formats & Assets

Lead Form Assets vs Promotion Assets: Capture a Lead or Push an Offer

In short: Both assets add something extra under a search ad, but one is about gathering information and the other is about pushing urgency. Lead form assets let someone submit their contact details right inside the ad, generating a conversion without a site visit. Promotion assets highlight a specific discount or offer - a monetary or percentage amount, sometimes tied to an occasion - with a start and end date that retires it automatically. A lead form works regardless of whether there's a sale on; a promotion asset only makes sense when there genuinely is a time-boxed deal. Chooser: use promotion assets when you have a real, dated discount worth advertising, and lead form assets when the goal is collecting contact details rather than driving an immediate purchase.

By the AdFlint research team · Fact-checked against current Google and Meta platform behavior · Last reviewed July 2026

Lead Form Assets

Attaches a form directly to a Google ad so someone can submit contact details without visiting your site, formerly called lead form extensions.

Google shows a hosted form after the click, prefilled from the signed-in account, and you retrieve the leads by webhook or CSV download. It suits mobile-heavy searches where a slow landing page loses people. Two things trip advertisers up: leads never reach your CRM unless the webhook is wired and monitored, and the low friction that lifts volume also admits unqualified submissions, so qualifying questions matter.

Full definition

Promotion Assets

Highlights a specific discount or offer under a search ad, with an optional occasion label and defined start and end dates.

You set the deal as a monetary or percentage amount, optionally tie it to an occasion such as Black Friday, and give it a date range so it retires itself. Formerly promotion extensions, they earn their place when the discount is the main reason to click. The mistake is forgetting the end date or leaving the offer live after the landing page changed, sending people to a promotion that vanished.

Full definition

Side by side.

The differences that actually change what happens in your account.

	Lead Form Assets	Promotion Assets
What it needs to exist	A working form with fields you've defined - no expiration required.	An actual discount, with an amount and a start and end date.
What happens when it's clicked	The form opens in place; submission is the conversion.	Normal - it opens your landing page like any other headline click.
Lifespan	Indefinite - stays live until you pause or edit it.	Self-limiting - it stops showing once the end date passes.
What it risks if neglected	Leads pile up unseen if the webhook or export isn't monitored.	An expired offer keeps advertising a deal that no longer exists if the end date isn't set or the landing page changed.
Conversion source	Its own submission, tracked inside Google Ads.	None of its own - whatever conversion happens is measured on the linked landing page.
Urgency it creates	None inherently - the form doesn't imply a deadline.	Built in - the date range itself signals limited time.
Typical use case	Ongoing lead generation for a service or inquiry.	A seasonal sale, a limited discount code, or an occasion-tied offer.

What actually separates them.

A promotion asset has a built-in expiration date and retires itself; a lead form asset has no such lifecycle and runs until someone manually changes it.

Lead form assets generate their own conversion on submission, while promotion assets just get someone to the landing page - the actual conversion still depends on what's there.

A promotion asset only makes sense when there's a real, time-boxed discount behind it; a lead form asset works with no discount at all, since it's about capturing contact information, not driving a sale.

Neglecting a lead form asset means missed leads sitting unread; neglecting a promotion asset's end date means advertising a deal that no longer exists.

Promotion assets can be tied to an occasion label like a seasonal sale, a form of pre-click urgency lead form assets have no equivalent to.

Which one should you use?

Use Lead Form Assets when

You want ongoing lead capture that doesn't depend on having an active discount running.
The goal is contact information, not an immediate purchase or booking.
Your landing page can't be trusted to close the sale reliably, so you'd rather end the funnel inside the ad.
You have a process to follow up on leads pulled from the dashboard or webhook.

Use Promotion Assets when

You have a genuine, time-limited discount and want the ad itself to advertise it.
The offer is tied to a real occasion - a holiday sale, an anniversary discount, a seasonal promo.
You're confident you'll remember to set, and honor, an accurate end date.
Your landing page already reflects the same offer, so clicking through doesn't create a mismatch.

Common questions.

What happens after a promotion asset's end date passes?

Google stops showing it automatically once the date range you set expires, so you don't need to manually pause it to avoid advertising a lapsed deal. You do still need to make sure the landing page itself no longer reflects the old offer, since the asset retiring doesn't change what's on your site.

Can I run a promotion asset without a lead form, or do they need to work together?

They're fully independent - a promotion asset just needs a discount and dates, a lead form asset just needs a working form, and neither depends on the other being present. Plenty of accounts run one without the other depending on whether the immediate goal is a sale or a lead.

Why did my promotion asset get disapproved?

The most common reasons are a discount that isn't genuinely available at checkout, a missing or implausible end date, or occasion language used outside the relevant window, like Black Friday messaging running in March. Google checks that the advertised deal actually matches what a searcher finds on the landing page.

Or stop choosing between them.

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