To help simplify and optimize campaign creation, Google Ads is launching AI-assisted pre-filled Demand Gen campaigns. These setups use existing Performance Max campaigns as a reference, with plans to expand this capability to additional campaign types in the future.
This article explains how pre-filled campaigns work, where to find them, and answers frequently asked questions.
On this page
- How pre-filled campaigns work
- Pre-filled campaign logic
- Where to find pre-filled campaigns
- Frequently asked questions
How pre-filled campaigns work
With this feature you can perform the following actions:
- One-Click pre-fill: With a single click, the system will automatically import and pre-fill your new Demand Gen campaign with:
- Targeting: Relevant audience settings from the selected Performance Max campaign.
- Assets: Existing image and video assets from your Performance Max campaign.
- Settings: Other core campaign configurations.
- AI-Powered recommendations: Beyond just copying, Google AI will also recommend:
- Bid and budget: Suggested bid and budget levels designed to maximize performance specifically within Demand Gen's ecosystem.
- Best practice adherence: The pre-filled campaign will be set up to follow Demand Gen best practices, giving it the best chance for early success.
- Advertiser control: You can easily review and edit all AI-assisted pre-filled settings and assets before launching the campaign, maintaining full control. If you aren’t comfortable using pre-fill, you can always select “Skip for now”.
Pre-filled campaign logic
Demand Gen campaigns have a few distinct settings and best practice differences from Performance Max campaigns. When reviewing your new campaign draft, you may notice a few recommended adjustments:
- Bid strategy: In general, Google Ads will default to the same bidding strategy as your reference campaign. We don’t currently support Performance Max campaigns with value-based bidding, like Target ROAS and Max. conversion value, as part of the pre-fill experience. As a result, value-based bidding campaigns won’t be eligible to copy over.
- Bids: Demand Gen helps advertisers create and convert demand when consumers aren't actively searching. To account for the cost of finding consumers who aren't yet searching for you, our AI systems will recommend a slightly higher CPA than your existing Performance Max campaign.
- Budgets: To get the best performance, Demand Gen campaigns generally require a higher budget, such as setting a daily budget of at least 10 times your target CPA for target bid strategies or $100/day budget minimum for Maximum bid strategies.
- Ad group-level settings: Certain settings, such as demographic exclusions, locations, languages, and audience signals, are maintained but moved to the ad group level, rather than the campaign level.
- For Performance Max campaigns with more than 5 asset groups, Google will only pre-fill the top 5 based on the previous 30-day spend.
- Creatives: The system will pre-fill the campaign using your existing high-value images, videos, and text assets.
- Audiences and targeting: Your Performance Max Audience settings will carry over to your Demand Gen campaign. Note there are a few targeting exceptions:
- Brand exclusions are not eligible on Demand Gen. Your campaign may serve on YouTube searches related to brands excluded in the Performance Max campaign.
- Negative keywords are not eligible. Your campaign may serve on pages or within contexts that are excluded in the Performance Max campaign.
- Feature support: Keep in mind that certain extensions and features are not supported by Demand Gen campaigns and won’t be ported over:
- Pre-fill isn’t blocked, but you’ll have to change a setting to run. Consider the following:
- A “Get Directions” Goal: You must pick the next best conversion goal.
- No image or video creative assets: You’ll have to upload creatives.
- Product feed filters aren’t copied over and have to be re-applied.
- Pre-fill isn’t blocked but these features will not be pre-filled:
- Store-Sales
- Sitelinks
- Promotions
- Prices
- Calls
- Structured snippets
- Lead forms
- Callouts
- Pre-fill isn’t blocked, but you’ll have to change a setting to run. Consider the following:
Before publishing, you’ll have the opportunity to review and adjust all settings, ensuring your budget, target CPA, and audience signals align with your specific goals.
Where to find pre-filled campaigns
You can pre-fill your Demand Gen campaigns through the following entry points.
“Recommendations” page
You’ll find the existing "Add a Demand Gen campaign" on the Recommendations page. Choosing to start the campaign from this recommendation takes you to the campaign construction page, where a Google AI pre-fill panel will be presented at the top of your account.
During campaign construction
When an advertiser with an existing Performance Max campaign in their account initiates the DG campaign creation, a pre-fill panel will automatically display at the top of the construction page to facilitate the streamlined setup.
Frequently asked questions
What happens when I make changes that go outside of the pre-populated settings?
Timing of when you select “Pre-fill”: If you think you are interested in using the Pre-fill option, it’s best to click that first. Any changes you make after selecting the pre-fill option will be saved and preserved. However, if you don’t select pre-fill and then at some later point after you’ve made changes decide you want to use it, any changes you’ve made until that point will be overwritten.
Note: You can make changes as you normally would during campaign creation to align with your goals. The settings we have pre-filled for your campaigns aim to align with minimal thresholds of our generally established best practices for Demand Gen. Implementing changes that deviate from these standards may result in diminished campaign performance, but that is entirely up to your discretion.
Why are some settings from my source Performance Max campaign being altered?
Because Demand Gen and Performance Max adhere to different best practices, settings are adjusted during the transition to ensure alignment with Demand Gen best practices. Any modifications made are intended to meet Demand Gen standards, and if a Performance Max setting is unavailable, we default to the optimized Demand Gen approach.
Some workflows pre-select a Performance Max campaign for me to use as my source campaign. Other workflows do not pre-select a campaign and have me choose from a list of possible campaigns. Why is that?
The workflow varies because some accounts provide highly definitive signals indicating a specific campaign should be utilized. In instances where the ideal choice is less obvious, we provide advertisers the flexibility to manually select the most appropriate source campaign from a list of campaigns.
Will the budget for my new Demand Gen campaign come out of my existing Performance Max budget?
No. This effort is focused on driving additional conversion volume. It’s recommended that you use a new budget for the Demand Gen campaigns, or a portion of unspent Performance Max budgets, and it will not impact your Performance Max campaign's current spend.
If I use the pre-fill feature, is Google guaranteeing that my new Demand Gen campaign will perform better than if I set it up manually?
The pre-fill feature is designed to increase the chances of the Demand Gen campaign performing well by ensuring it follows best practices from the start. However, performance isn’t guaranteed, as many variables can impact campaign results.
What if I want to pre-fill my Demand Gen campaign with another Demand Gen campaign instead of Performance Max?
