In October 2023 Google rolled out Demand Gen campaigns to all Google Ads accounts, replacing the older Discovery campaigns.
This new campaign type is supposed to be Google’s version of paid social campaigns, similar to those on Meta and Tiktok, to leverage YouTube’s popularity.
In this article we’ll dive into what makes this campaign type unique, and whether it can be useful for your business.
What Is Demand Gen in Google Ads?
Demand gen campaigns are Google’s latest attempt to offer advertisers ‘paid social’ style campaigns.
This means, ‘push’ marketing campaigns which focus on generating demand for your brand or products.
Demand Gen campaigns rely heavily on visual creatives, in order engage potential customers and get them to convert on your website.
How Do Demand Gen Campaigns Work?
Demand Gen campaigns are unusual creatures in the Google Ads UI. Search advertisers need to think more like social media professionals, and provide a variety of video, image, and text assets.
By adding your product feed to the campaign, Demand Gen can also generate ads with your product listings.
Advertisers can define the ideal target audience, like in-market, affinity, demographics, remarketing, and lookalikes (the only Google campaign type where these are still available).
Google’s AI will attempt to match the best ad format to each user, to achieve the best possible results.
Where Do Demand Gen Campaigns Serve Ads?
Ads created in Demand Gen campaigns can be shown on YouTube, Discover, and Gmail.
Advertisers who segment the campaign results by ad format will see the following split:
- Skippable in-stream videos
- In-feed (YouTube and Discover feeds)
- Shorts
What Bid Strategies Are Available?
Advertisers can choose from 3 bid strategies in Demand Gen campaigns:
- Max Clicks
- Maximize Conversions / tCPA
- Maximize Conversion Value / tROAS
At the beginning of a campaign, I’d recommend starting with Maximize Conversions, and only setting a tCPA after tracking at least 50 conversions.
I’d also suggest increasing your conversion’s engaged-view window to 30 days. As these campaigns target audience that is at the top or the middle of the marketing funnel, prospects typically take longer to convert, and you want Google to catch these conversions and attribute them correctly (i.e. not to the brand or PMax campaigns).
What’s the difference between display and YouTube campaigns to Demand Gen?
While the 3 campaign types are used to target potential customers at higher funnel stages, demand gen is more action-focused. This means, its main purpose is customer acquisition rather than brand awareness and consideration.
Another advantage of demand gen is that it targets different ad types in a single campaign, and ideally optimizes the mix to generate the best results.
Should I Test Demand Gen for My Business?
It all sounds great, Google has finally introduced a ‘social ads’ format. But is it the right campaign type for your business?
From my experience, Demand Gen tends to have a relatively high CPA, at least at the beginning, making it significantly less profitable than search, shopping, or performance max campaigns.
Google also recommends setting a budget of 15 times your tCPA to achieve optimal performance.
So it really goes down to your budget. While Demand Gen can work great for Ecommerce or leadgen, I’d only use it in accounts with relatively high spend. Otherwise, its higher CPAs might impact the overall account performance too heavily.
Another thing to consider is the quality of your creatives, especially videos.
If you already have video ads that performed well on Meta or TikTok, you can repurpose them for YouTube.
If on the other hand, you have very few, or not so good video assets, I’d wait with Demand Gen and focus more on the lower funnel campaigns and you get new materials.
Conclusion
Demand Gen campaigns are Google Ads’ new attempt to offer advertisers social media-style ads. The most important format in these campaigns is videos, however, ads can also show as text and image on Discover, or as Gmail ads.
Google advertisers should adopt a different mindset when working on these campaigns, more focused on creative testing and increasing CTRs.
You should test Demand Gen if you have enough budget and good video ads, preferably some that perform well on paid social platforms.
If your budget is relatively low, you can’t afford relatively higher CPAs, and your video materials aren’t good, I’d suggest waiting with Demand Gen.
Further Reading
- Mastering A/B Testing in Google Ads: Strategies for Optimal Results
- Google Performance Max vs. Standard Shopping Explained
- When To Use Target CPA vs Target ROAS?
- Headlines And Description Assets
- 5 Performance Max Best Practices To Nail Sales
