About Demand Gen campaigns

 

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Demand Gen campaigns capture engagement and action across YouTube, including Shorts, Discover, Gmail, and Google video partners. Demand Gen campaigns are ideal for social advertisers who want to serve visually-appealing, multi-format ads on Google’s most impactful surfaces available to any advertiser.

YouTube is 2X more likely than any other video services and social media platforms to be used for researching products and brands. Viewers rated YouTube ads significantly (16%) more trustworthy, credible, and honest than ads on the other video and social media platforms.*

(*Source 1. Google commissioned Ipsos Consumer Continuous, U.S., CA, U.K., FR, DE, IT, AU, JP, IN, CN, BR, MX, ES, ZA, KR, AR, CO, BE, CL, PE, SE, NL, DK, FI, NO ~n=500-1,000 online consumers 18+ per market. Sep 8-11, 2022)

Additional fun facts:

  • Reach up to 3 billion monthly active users as they scroll through their Google feeds such as Gmail, Discover, and YouTube, along with YouTube Shorts, now averaging over 50 billion daily views.
  • One in 3 consumers say that they've purchased something on Google feeds which they were not originally shopping for.
  • 63% of consumers discover new products or brands on Google feeds. Among those, 91% consumers took action immediately.

Benefits

This infographic represents the expanded impact of your ads on Google surfaces using Demand Gen.

This infographic represents tailored ad experiences, one of Demand Gen's key features.

This infographic represents AI-powered bidding and measurement, one of Demand Gen's key features.

  • Expand the impact of your ads: Serve ads on YouTube and Google’s most immersive, visual surfaces such as YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Google video partners to help put your potential customers into a purchase mindset. Demand Gen lets you reach up to 3 billion active monthly users, and Google AI creates the perfect combination of tailored, high impact visuals, messages, and placements, so you can drive more consumers to press “pay now.” Plus, you can easily preview your top performing video and image creatives across Google and YouTube to ensure they tell the right story.
  • Tailored ad experiences: Use audience-first creatives that drive demand. With just a few clicks and the help of Google AI, your most immersive, visual creatives will be served to the most relevant potential customers. Lookalike segments help you reach new, qualified audiences outside of your existing customer base. This includes people who made a past purchase, visited your website, or watched videos on your YouTube channel. You can tap into audience insights to custom-match the right audience based on your advertising goals. Plus, A/B experimentation will help you fine-tune your creative approach to regularly improve performance.
  • AI-powered bidding & measurement: Fuel your marketing funnel and measure the impact. Optimize across the full funnel with Max Clicks bidding to drive consideration goals such as site visits. Use measurement tools such as brand and search lift that help you determine whether your ad spend is paying off. Powered by insights from these tools and Google AI, your Demand Gen campaigns allow you to optimize for website traffic, convert high value users, and bid against efficient metrics while using data driven attribution to show the full value of a campaign in the Google ecosystem.

This animation represents Discovery campaign ad placement when using Demand Gen. This animation represents Gmail ads format when using Demand Gen. An illustration depicting an ad in a Google video partner’s website.
This animation represents YouTube in-feed ads placement when using Demand Gen. This animation represents YouTube in-stream ads placement when using Demand Gen. This animation represents YouTube Shorts ads placement when using Demand Gen.

Knowing when to use Demand Gen campaigns

 

This icon represents Google Search.

Search

This icon represents Performance Max, which allows performance advertisers to access all of their Google Ads inventory from a single campaign.

Performance Max

This icon represents Demand Gen, which generates demands and delivers business results on Google's most visual and entertaining surfaces.

Demand Gen

This icon represents guided use for Search, Performance Max, and Demand Gen.

Use to:

Maximize performance across Google Search Maximize performance across all of Google’s channels and surfaces Generate demand and deliver business results on Google’s most visual, entertaining surfaces

This icon represents clicks, conversions, and conversion value in Demand Gen.

Bidding

  • Target IS
  • Clicks
  • Conversions
  • Conversion Value
  • Conversions
  • Conversion Value
  • Clicks
  • Conversions
  • Conversion Value

This icon represents the ability to target unique audience segments.

Audience

Search audiences enable advertisers to combine their 1P data with Google signals to achieve a variety of marketing objectives.

Steer AI with NCA goals, value rules, and audience signals.

(No hard targeting)

Enable audience customization with the ability to target unique audience segments such as Lookalike segments.

This icon represents the ability to create campaigns specifically for Google and YouTube's visual ad surfaces.

Channels

Reach customers on Search + Search Partners (AFS).

Drive performance across all Google channels and inventory.

(Search, YouTube including Shorts, Discover, Gmail, Display)

Create campaigns specifically for Google and YouTube’s most visual, entertaining ad surfaces.

(YouTube Shorts, YouTube in-feed, YouTube Home feed, YouTube watch next, YouTube Search, Discover, Gmail, and Google video partners)

This icon represents the images or text that make up the creative assets of an ad.

Creative assets

  • Image (Landscape 1.91:1, Logo 1:1, 4:1, Portrait 4:5, Square 1:1)
  • Text (Headline, long headline, description, final URL or URL path, business name, CTA, sitelink descriptions)
  • Image (Landscape 1.91:1, Logo 1:1, 4:1, Portrait 4:5, Square 1:1)
  • Text (Headline, long headline, description, final URL or URL path, business name, CTA)
  • Video (horizontal, square, vertical)

Learn how to Build an asset group.

  • Image (Landscape 1.91:1, Logo 1:1, Portrait 4:5, Square 1:1)
  • Text (Headline, description, final URL, business name, CTA)
  • Video (Landscape, portrait, square, vertical)
  • Carousel ad (Headline, description, final URL, business name, CTA, logo 1:1, 2-10 image cards:
    • Landscape 1.91:1, Portrait 4:5, Square 1:1
  • Product feeds

Learn more about Demand Gen campaign asset specs and best practices.

This icon represents the insights and reporting metrics for all individual assets and formats when using Demand Gen.

Measurement and Reporting

Reporting to keyword/ad level with insights and recommendations to improve your performance.
  • Insights for asset groups (launched) and individual assets (2H 2023)
  • Product level reporting for GMC
  • Insights and reporting metrics for all individual assets/formats
  • Brand Lift under allowlist, Search Lift, and Conversion Lift measurement
  • Creative A/B experiments
  • Product-level reporting for GMC feeds

This icon represents other product differentiators when using Demand Gen.

Other product differentiators

  • Product listing ads
  • Advanced goals: NCA
  • MO/Goal focused buying flow
  • Advanced goals: NCA, NCA HVO, re-engagement
  • Retail feed formats on all surfaces (Search, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, Display)
  • Social-like buying flow
  • Product Feed formats on all visual surfaces (YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Google video partners) with option to upload cover image/video

Before you begin

Assets

Gather your creative assets, including headlines, descriptions, images and logos. To drive better performance, select your highest-quality image and video assets, such as brand and inspirational imagery featuring minimal text and effective lighting. You can also repurpose top-performing assets and messaging from existing campaigns on other platforms such as email or social.

Note: You’ll increase your chances of achieving optimal performance by including more assets.

Conversion tracking

Set up conversion tracking on your website and make sure that the Google tag is working properly. Optimize for lightweight conversion events such as "add to basket" or "site visit" and choose a conversion counting option that makes sense for your campaign. This provides valuable signals to our systems so you can achieve your desired results faster.

Budget requirements

Your budget settings affect how quickly we can optimize your campaign for conversions. For campaigns using target CPA bidding, it’s recommended to set a budget that’s at least 15 times your target CPA.

For campaigns using Maximize conversions bidding, use the new tCPA scaling simulator within Google Ads to interact with percent-based bid increments and get traffic estimates.

If your ads are marked as "Eligible (limited)" due to "Implied Interactivity", you must fix the ads for them to serve. Additionally, ensure that your tCPA bid is not set far below the historical average.


Next steps

View Demand Gen campaign asset quality and policy requirements

Learn Demand Gen asset policy requirements as you plan for your new Demand Gen campaign.

View Ad strength for your existing images and videos

Ensure that you’re using your very best creatives for your new Demand Gen campaigns by relying on the Ad Strength tool.

View asset reporting for your existing images and videos

Learn about asset reporting for your existing creatives before you create your Demand Gen campaigns.

Learn Demand Gen asset specs and best practices

Learn how to create the highest potential ads following asset specs and using asset best practices.

Learn about dynamic product ads for Demand Gen campaigns

Learn how you can use Google Merchant Center product feeds in your Demand Gen campaigns.

Create a Demand Gen campaign

Learn how to create a Demand Gen campaign, including asset specifications and management.

Use lookalike segments to expand your audience reach

Reach people who have similarities to your existing customers with lookalike segments.

About Demand Gen metrics and reporting

Learn About metrics and reporting for Demand Gen campaigns.

About Demand Gen A/B experiments

Create A/B experiments for Demand Gen campaigns.

About Google video partners

Google video partners is an available surface for Demand Gen campaigns. Learn more About Google video partners.

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