For my last conference of 2024, I had the opportunity to attend HeroConf in sunny San Diego. The conference was recently purchased by Rough Media (the organizers of the brightonSEO conference) and the two events were co-located. I was incredibly impressed by the attendance (2,800 attendees) and the excitement and engagement were noticeable.
The agenda included two PPC tracks and the content was fantastic. Deciding which session to attend was agonizing because you knew you’d miss good sessions in the other track. However, after two full days of learning, my top takeaway was that most Google Ads advertisers are probably sleeping on Demand Gen campaigns.
What Are Demand Gen Campaigns Anyway?
When the Demand Gen campaign type was initially announced in June 2023 I was a bit skeptical of where it fit in the larger ecosystem. Performance Max seemed like it was going to be the one-size-fits-all campaign type of the future. Still, Google quickly put Demand Gen on the fast track when it announced that Discovery campaigns would all be upgraded to Demand Gen. This continued when Google announced that Video Action Campaigns will be converted to Demand Gen campaigns in Q2 of 2025. So if you’re unfamiliar with the campaign type, you should start learning about it now.
Here is the official Google take on Demand Gen campaigns:
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.
As usual, Google has the gaudy stats to show you the size of the opportunity – “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.” So people are there, but why exactly is Demand Gen such a great opportunity?
Access Google-Controlled Placements
If you’ve run any advertising on the Google Display Network recently, you’ve probably encountered a lot of questionable app and website placements as well as low-quality traffic. I’m really pessimistic about the quality of the network and don’t see Google making a concerted effort to clean it up. Since Display is part of Performance Max, the problem is compounded. Here is where Demand Gen has the edge. It only serves on YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Google video partners, but you can turn off video partners:
If you leave this setting off, then you have only YouTube, Discover, and Gmail, all Google-owned and operated placements which will means better quality control and higher value to advertisers.
Focus On The Highest Value Areas For Your Business
Not only do you get Google’s own inventory, but you can further target areas that bring the most value to your business. During the campaign setup flow you can be very specific about which devices your ads will show on:
If you’re advertising a mobile app, you can limit your ads to mobile devices. If your app only works on iOS, you can show on just Apple devices. You can even get carrier-specific if you want.
Say you’re looking for clicks to your website. Remove TV screens from the mix. But don’t stop there.
Target Lookalike Audiences
When Google sunsetted their similar audiences functionality in 2023 I wondered why Google would get rid of such a powerful tool. I had long used Lookalike audiences in Meta with great results and I felt like it was a missed opportunity. However, Google has given us Lookalike audiences again, but ONLY in Demand Gen campaigns.
You create the Lookalike segment in the ad group settings of a Demand Gen campaign. You need three things:
- A seed list of customers (you can use up to 10 lists)
- Geography (country-level)
- Reach
- This is done at three levels: Narrow (2.5%), Balanced (5%), and Broad (10%)
- If you’re targeting the United States with its 300 million residents, a narrow Lookalike would have approximately 7.5 million people in it. Doesn’t feel very narrow, but we work with what we have.
Here is what the set-up looks like:
This feature alone is worth giving Demand Gen a try if you’re looking for expanded reach.
Pitfalls to Avoid
As usual with Google products, you have to pay attention to the default settings during campaign creation. Demand Gen will default to using optimized targeting. This setting lives in the ad group settings and unless you uncheck this box, all the audience work you put in will only act as a signal, not explicit targeting.
If you want your targeting to be incredibly broad, then check this box. If you want to focus your efforts on the audience you defined, uncheck this box. If you’re not sure, uncheck this box.
Summary
Demand Gen campaigns in Google Ads are getting a lot of attention from the product team, but adoption is lagging from advertisers. This imbalance creates an opportunity for the savvy advertiser to get in early and get ahead of competitors. Happy testing!
