Performance Max rejects MP3 and WAV: turn a music track into a video

You cannot use a Sume music track as a Performance Max video asset as is, because Google's page says audio files (MP3, WAV, PCM) are not accepted on YouTube. Render the track into an MP4 with Timeline 1.0: a still image as the video slot, the track as the audio spine, 10 seconds or longer. Timeline costs $0.10 per ceil minute of output.

What Google's page says

The Performance Max video assets page (read 2026-10-10) lists three orientations, 16:9, 1:1 and 9:16, with each video at least 10 seconds. A Shorts placement needs a vertical video of 10 to 60 seconds. It recommends 1080p, with 1080x1920 for vertical, and a file up to 256 GB.

What Sume's music output is

Music 1.0 returns audio, an audio/mpeg artifact, so it is an audio-only file. That is the format the Google page names as not accepted. The answer is a container change plus a picture, not a re-encode of the sound.

There is a second reason to think about the container. Even when a platform accepts a sound file for some other purpose, a campaign that asks for a video asset expects a video stream, a picture to show. Giving it a track plus a still satisfies the file type, and the still is what viewers see, so choose it deliberately: a product, a logo plate or a quiet brand frame, not a leftover frame.

The brief for the music itself belongs upstream. State the length you need in the generation request, then render. If the track is longer than you want, trim the audio first or set audio.duration_seconds to the part you need, and use source_in to start later in the file.

The render

Timeline 1.0 takes one audio spine plus ordered video slots, and stills are static holds. So the request has an audio URL with a duration, and one video slot whose source is a still from your brand.

Both files must be this workspace's media.sume.com artifacts, so import the still first with a media import. Set the output width and height to even integers between 256 and 2160. For a vertical asset, the default 1080x1920 already matches the recommended size; for 16:9 send 1920 by 1080, and for 1:1 send 1080 by 1080.

• Pick audio.duration_seconds of 10 or more. A 9 second track would miss the minimum.
• For the Shorts placement keep it between 10 and 60 seconds.
• Use fit cover (the default) so the still fills the frame, or contain if it must not crop.
• Call the unbilled plan endpoint first to see billable minutes.

Cost and what you still own

A track of 30 seconds renders as one billable minute, so $0.10. The reserve is ceil of the spine length over 60. Music generation is billed separately at its own catalog rate, so read the live price from the catalog.

Sume does not upload to Google Ads and does not check policy. Whether a static picture over music is a good ad is your call; Google's page only decides the file type, orientation and length. For motion, put a Sume video clip in the slot instead of a still.

A worked example: a 24 second track, 9:16, for the Shorts placement. That is inside the 10 to 60 second window. One billable minute at $0.10, one still held for 24 seconds, output 1080x1920. For the 16:9 and 1:1 versions of the same asset, you submit the same spine with two more renders at 1920x1080 and 1080x1080, so three renders and $0.30 cover the three orientations the page lists.