Google Ads has a setting named “automated locations” that has a subsetting to grant Google Ads access to your media and photos from your Google Business Profile. You can turn this on or off under “automated locations” option in Google Ads.

Anthony Higman said this is new and posted about this on Twitter. The setting reads, “Allow Google Ads to use merchant photos.” “Grant Google Ads license to use merchant photos and other rich media from the linked Google Business Profiles in the advertising campaigns from this account,” Google added.

Here is Anthony’s screenshot:

Google has more details on location assets in this help document.

As an FYI, we just covered that the Google SGE uses Business Profile data but there is no way to opt out of that.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Update: Here is a bit more related to this: