Demand Gen (The Successor to Discovery/Video Action)

Google Demand Gen campaigns enable digital Marketers to acquire high-intent audiences at scale, driving conversions and building long-lasting relationships. Demand Gen is an amalgamation of two previously distinct formats: Discovery and Video Action campaigns, thus combining the best of both worlds. Demand Gen campaigns present holistic, narratively structured, and visually impactful assets across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. In Demand Gen campaigns, conversion-minded advertisers leverage AI to dynamically adapt their creatives to evolving customer considerations, touchpoints, and intents.

Demand Gen campaigns fill the upper-middle funnel and directly connect top-funnel engagement with lower-funnel revenue. Demand Gen campaigns, the successor to, and the natural amalgam of both, Discovery and Video Action campaigns, bring together the best of these formats while further augmenting their value via AI-driven personalization, an element essential to the evolving marketing landscape. How Google approaches Demand Gen campaigns integrating the upper-funnel reach and creative skippability of Video Action campaigns with the audience-centric, interest-, delight-, and intent-based executional flavor of Discovery campaigns sets Demand Gen apart and positions it as the next logical step in the evolution of upper-funnel visual advertising.

The Birth of Demand Gen Campaigns

Google’s demand generation campaign type, distilled from Discovery and Video Action campaigns, leverages artificial intelligence to apply increasing intent-driven signals from prospective customers. Marketers can utilize Demand Gen campaigns to connect with individuals along the purchase journey and deliver creatives that resonate with their current level of intent. The various demand generation ad formats integrate visual storytelling elements optimized by machine learning and appear across YouTube Shorts, the Discover Feed, and Gmail ads. Demand Gen campaigns intelligently adapt toward the effective and efficient acquisition of customers.

The merger of Discovery and Video Action campaigns into a single Demand Gen format, fortified by AI at its core, provides solutions to key challenges every marketer faces: competition for consumer attention, the creation of scale in reach, audience intent alignment, optimizing creative, and feeding bottom-line activity through top-funnel engagement. Demand Gen campaigns address these pain points by delivering a product that unifies reach across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail; attains that reach using machine learning-based asset optimization; personalizes the experience based on audience intent; and maintains the channels’ distinctiveness and intent signals.

From Discovery to Demand Gen – What Changed?

The transition from Discovery and Video Action campaigns to Demand Gen has involved much more than just a name change for Google. Operationally, the integration combines different data signals from across channels, audiences, and platforms to optimize how ads are placed, who sees them, and how much advertisers pay for them. Strategically, it wields a much stronger intent lens by merging the high-funnel Discovery environments with the mid- to lower-funnel bias of YouTube’s in-feed videos, thereby setting up an AI-supported full-funnel cross-channel opportunity.

Bidding now relies on a modified version of the Max Conversions and Target CPA strategies found in Performance Max, which adjust placements to maximize conversions and lower CPA based on first-, second-, and third-party data alongside an advertiser’s own conversions. Collaboration between Google’s machine-learning and creative engines undertakes the hard A/B testing work of evaluating visual assets and recommending stronger designs or copy, give-and-take adjustments and the occasional surface change, cruise control on testing and optimization, and day-to-day experimentation on particular signals.

Why Google Merged Video Action and Discovery into One AI-Powered Format

The merger unifies two demand and intent-driven formats, reinforcing Video Action’s reach while allowing both bid to conversion and audience signal activation. Demand Gen is therefore well placed to serve a wider range of purchase life cycle stages, acquiring potential buyers so they can be re-engaged across channels, devices, and creative formats during subsequent decision phases.

Recognizing the mutual benefits of expanding Video Action’s engaged audience, the new Demand Gen format enables marketers to bring in potential customers and retarget them across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail as they move closer to decision-making. The result is alignment between the two previous campaign types: Demand Gen combines Video Action’s audience targeting capability with Discovery’s comprehensive data approaches and AI-led personalization especially useful for retail advertisers aiming for growth by acquiring new customers. Using owned and second-party data with lookalike audiences allows Demand Gen to lean even further towards the upper part of the conversion funnel while continuing to fill more performance-driven lower-funnel actions. Integration with Performance Max extends this logic across the full-funnel structure.

What Is a Demand Gen Campaign?

Demand Gen Campaigns are a new advertising format on YouTube, Google Discover, and Gmail designed to engage prospective customers and drive actions that benefit the business, such as lead generation, product purchases, and sales conversions. The campaigns allow businesses to reach intent-driven audiences across channels and devices. They can leverage Google’s first-party and second-party data signals, including custom demographics, Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, and Customer Match, for powerful marketing. At the same time, AI personalizes the ad experience based on the visitors’ interests and stage in the customer journey.

Demand Gen Campaigns unify the AI capabilities of Video Action campaigns with the feed-based placement options of Discovery campaigns. Demand Gen Campaigns harness user intent and AI-driven optimization both in placement and creative evaluation to capture the audience’s attention and convert interest into action. They combine image and video creatives to enhance storytelling and engagement. The assets uploaded to Demand Gen Campaigns power the entire campaign and help AI make automated asset decisions.

Definition and Overview

Demand Gen ads appear across YouTube, Google Discover, and Gmail, either natively in the Feed or during the users’ journey on YouTube. These ads differ from Discovery and Video Action formats in the signals they leverage, the combination of storytelling and attention-grabbing creatives, and the AI-based optimization across channels. Demand Gen campaigns fuse video and visual creatives to engage users in the process of video consumption and Discovery Feed scrolling. This campaign type dynamically optimizes among different ad formats.

Demand Gen campaigns and ads within Demand Gen campaigns are fundamentally different from Discovery and Video Action campaigns in three distinct ways: intent signals, the need for creative fusion, and AI-driven optimization. Discovery ads run within the Google Discover Feed, whereas Demand Gen ads appear in Google Discover and on YouTube. Demand Gen campaigns also include an AI-powered creative component that blends visual and video storytelling, such as IA Image Carousel or IA Short-Form Video, and enable more robust optimization across placements.

Where Demand Gen Ads Appear

Demand Gen ads have a presence across three prominent Google touchpoints: YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. The ads therefore enjoy cross-channel synergy: the audience can engage with the same message in different formats across different devices. Abundant insights from prior campaigns have shown that such synergy boosts engagement, recollection, and conversion. For a product that deemed the end user ‘low intent’, Demand Gen campaigns have garnered surprisingly high expectations for conversions, especially from brands not actively looking to own the lower-funnel conversion but preferring to ride ‘assisted conversions’ from earlier, top-of-funnel connections.

Demand Gen assets and bidding are engineered with collaborative directives in mind. Despite the focus on ‘top-of-funnel spend’, creative signals and message copy should still speak to decision-making intent; when an audience’s emerging or underlying decision-making trends are catered to, dynamic creatives reflecting intent achieve exceptionally high click engagement. Now, Demand Gen has added lookalike capabilities, making the fertile data groundwork available for success. Without targeting alignment, using full-funnel push with top-funnel search, or Journey-centric website testing, Demand Gen’s full-funnel potential might read more like a scare than an opportunity, however.

How Demand Gen Differs from Discovery and Video Action

Demand Gen sets itself apart from Video Action and Discovery primarily by incorporating high-intent demand signals and seamlessly blending visual and video assets. Unlike Video Action, which targets mostly bottom-funnel audiences, Demand Gen campaigns enable acquisition at scale while tapping into high-intent audiences. Demand Gen campaigns embrace a more creative storytelling approach, harmoniously combining image and video formats to create more impactful user experiences. Successful Demand Gen ads leverage multiple visual formats that speak to audience segments and appeal to their creative intent.

The audience’s intent signals are a vital consideration for Demand Gen strategy. These signals shape the creative and visual narrative, setting the expectations for how broad or specific storytelling should be. Good storytelling taps the emotional and functional need the audience wants fulfilled, aligning with the purpose of Demand Gen to connect with audience segments reacting to high-intent cues or stimuli (first-party-data signals, search intentions, etc.) and acquiring them to build a custom audience for future marketing efforts. The most effective Demand Gen campaigns layer Demand Gen audience signals with compelling storytelling through a creative continuum.

How Demand Gen Works (AI Meets Creativity)

Demand Gen merges the AI driven capabilities of Discovery and Video Action campaigns along with a set of new creative formats to bring brands the ability to work effectively across the full funnel. AI plays a key role in Dynamic Product Ads, the the new Creative Assets, and Smart Bidding. Integrating Demand Gen Campaigns with Performance Max further strengthens the end-to-end journey, allowing it to feed bottom line actions from new conversations with your target audience, and Minimising manual adjustments.

Demand Gen Campaigns use new Creative Assets: Video, Image Carousel, and Short-Form Ads (YouTube Shorts and Discovery). These Ads work across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. Smart Bidding uses Max Conversions or Target CPA strategies to Re-Target Visitors. Demand Gen Ads are optimized toward Supervised Signals generated from other Channels or offer Support for Generating New Offers.

The Role of Creative Assets and Visual Storytelling

In Demand Gen campaigns, the diversity and quality of uploaded creative assets (images, videos, headlines, descriptions, and CTAs) strongly influence performance. Brands can upload responsive image carousel or video formats (including short-form video ads for YouTube Shorts and in-feed video ads for Discover) that feed off content and UX principles honed over decades. Yet innovation is also essential. By embracing dynamic product ads for eCommerce and leveraging storytelling to forge emotional connections with higher-intent audiences, brands can unlock the full potential of demand generation.

Image carousel ads allow brands to showcase multiple products or aspects of a single story in a single ad. To drive engagement, carousel sequencing should follow a cohesive narrative flow rather than simply present products one after the other. Putting best-selling or highest-margin products at the beginning may seem logical, but assets that tell a story often engage more deeply. For instance, if the owned-type brand Narrative Story Bags follows a compact visual storytelling flow in a carousel showing three bags carefully positioned, the product sequence may be less critical. The middle image can fulfil the scroll position effect, driving strong on-brand engagement. Most importantly, to leverage intuitive reveal, the first image should hide a strong-use case-pivot of the bag. Following that, the remaining product images give detail context for purchase consideration. A journey that balances product, use case, and detail is usually a winning combination.

Smart Bidding and AI Optimization

Bidding in Demand Gen relies on Max Conversions or Target CPA strategies. Customization is minimal; advertisers choose one of these bid types based on cost and target, leaving dynamic adjustments to Google’s Click-Through Rate (CTR) prediction engine and other AI components integrated with Smart Bidding.

Demand Gen Campaigns leverage full-funnel customer data to adapt bids for dynamic buyer intent and optimize for higher conversion rates with lower CPAs, guided by historical conversion patterns. This AI-driven approach closely follows the marketing technique of Follow Me Shopping.

Open the code to view potential Demand Gen campaign tactics. Action Deep Dive: Demand Gen supports Max Conversions or Target CPA Smart Bidding. Max Conversions aims to achieve the highest possible conversion volume within budget, while Target CPA sets a specified average cost per acquisition. The Bid Type section of the Demand Gen campaign specification recaps these options. Advertisers usually align the selection with campaign goals, such as a Target CPA for lower-funnel focus.

Unlike Performance Max, settings for Max Conversions and Target CPA in Demand Gen campaigns cannot be customized. Advertisers merely choose one of these types. All other optimization adjustments, including allocation among the advertising surfaces of YouTube, Discover Feed, and Gmail, are left to Google, which can utilize machine learning from more than 25 billion daily conversions to adjust for dynamic changes in buyers’ intent to tap into higher conversion rates and lower CPAs.

Integration with Google’s Data Signals and Conversions

The implicit user intent inferred by Google is further enhanced through both first- and second-party data signals, which are integrated into the Demand Gen framework for selection of audience signals, automatic optimization, and performance tracking. First-party data includes Customer Match lists uploaded by advertisers; second-party data is provided through Google tags tracking conversions linked to Demand Gen campaigns and aggregated from Google Analytics.

First-party Customer Match lists can also be used to create lookalike audience signals based on profiles of known customers. In addition, these audience segments can be connected to dynamic product ads powered by Google Merchant Center feeds to retarget users who have shown interest in similar products but have not yet converted.

As signals across both audiences and conversions mature, Google’s AI combines first-party and second-party data for optimization on the fly to achieve the best results. Both integration and optimization are at the core of Demand Gen campaigns, underscoring the future potential of these campaigns for brand awareness, product interest, and bottom-funnel conversions.

Why Businesses Should Use Demand Gen Campaigns

Three key reasons justify the strategic value of Demand Gen campaigns: they provide unified reach across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail; AI technology personalizes ad delivery and messaging; and they feed bottom-line conversions by engaging prospects at all funnel stages. For cross-channel synergies, Demand Gen augments YouTube’s top-funnel traffic generation with lower-funnel interaction signals, thus enriching Performance Max audiences for integrated full-funnel execution. By delivering Google-proven effectiveness and scalably dynamic creatives, Demand Gen campaigns represent a must-use format for businesses seeking sustained growth.

Data signal fusion leverages first- and second-party audience insights from customer interactions on owned websites (conversions) and channels (Customer Match) with Google’s predictive AI, developing dynamic creatives that align with the intent and engagement stage of audience segments. Demand Gen feeds bottom-line conversions with data signals generated during top-funnel audience engagement.

Unified Reach Across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail

Demand Gen campaigns unify reach across Google’s three major environments   YouTube, Discover, and Gmail   creating more efficient and effective marketing. The synergy enables advertisers to connect with intent audiences across all stages of the buying journey, on any device. Top-funnel activity creates new demand that naturally flows to lower-funnel performance. Ads are personalized at scale for every individual by Google’s AI, grounding marketing in real-time behavioral signals.

Cross-channel workflows combine asset and audience signals for full-funnel execution   for example, using Demand Gen to target existing first-party data in YouTube and Gmail while reaching new-lookalike audiences in Discover. Results across all stages can be attributed accurately, allowing the campaign to be optimized as a complete funnel rather than the sum of its parts. The synergy in Demand Gen campaigns is apparent in the AI-driven Dynamic Product Ads for eCommerce brands, where ads tailored for the demand stage retarget audiences in the conversion phase.

AI-Driven Personalization for Higher Conversions

Dynamic creatives and personalized messaging for different audiences drive higher conversion rates. Demand Gen assets have the context-sensitive flexibility to dynamically fuse product catalog items into visually stunning ads or tailor visual languages for Targeting and Affinity audience segments. These dynamic combinations open new optimization possibilities that Google is exploring.

Using Dynamic Product Ads, eCommerce brands can create ads that combine catalog products with visually engaging imagery. It’s an especially powerful capability for brands with large product portfolios such as fashion retailers and multi-brand retailers. Events, holidays, and seasons can trigger specific campaigns that highlight the most relevant creative. Automated Data Feeds into Google Ads facilitate building such Dynamic Product Ads faster and at scale. Data feeds can automatically load product details, images, stock availability, prices, and descriptions. Google Ads can also tap these feeds to drive relevant remarketing dynamically.

Combining established story arcs that emotionally engage intended audiences with Demand Gen creatives elevates brand-building connections in a more effective manner. Specific audience intent signals can facilitate tapping known emotional drivers embedded in the story structure.

Lower Funnel Performance with Top-Funnel Reach

As the AI-driven Demand Gen campaigns foster ad engagement at the top of the purchase funnel, they can scale bottom-funnel actions at lower unit costs. Conversion Rate and CPA metrics are crucial, especially statistical modeling that attributes Demand Gen exposure to customer decisions down the line. The use of Demand Gen campaigns within Performance Max cross-channel ecosystems can also help to leverage the ad format for the bottom line.

From discovering a product or service to ultimately taking action, the full customer journey often spans several ad exposures across multiple channels and devices. While Demand Gen has been designed to engage top-funnel customers, advertisers should continuously track Conversion Rate and CPA metrics. Why? Because Demand Gen is ultimately about driving actions at lower costs, and these metrics are good indicators for performance at the bottom of the purchase funnel.

Demand Gen Ad Formats (Visual + Video Fusion)

Demand Gen campaigns meld sight and sound across dynamic assets to engage intent-driven audiences. The four Demand Gen formats are Image Carousel, Short-Form Video (YouTube Shorts), In-Feed Video Ads (Discovery Feed), and combinations of Product and Lifestyle creatives (e.g., product with lifestyle footage). This section details the formats and how these creative approaches work together for greater effect. For format-specific guidance see Creative Best Practices for Demand Gen Campaigns.

Image Carousel Ads

In Demand Gen ad campaigns,  allow brands to showcase multiple images that users can swipe through while scrolling on YouTube Shorts or in Google Discover Feeds, offering an engaging user experience. The images need to follow the sequence and structure of an engaging story, featuring hierarchy and color considerations that hook interest and communicate essential messages quickly. Users should feel compelled to swipe through the assets, leading to an enjoyable experience if done correctly. Testing different variations is recommended using AI Asset Insights to determine the best approach for the target audience.

In the first asset, brands should start with the most crucial part of the message, whether product specifics or higher-level context. For the other assets, think about the narrative: what should be next, what drives the user to swipe again, and how to deliver the overall story? In addition, brands should use motion, color, and other visual elements for visual hierarchy. With scrolling being so easy to do, make sure it is as engaging as possible.

Short-Form Video (YouTube Shorts) Ads

When designing short-form YouTube Shorts creative, narrative brevity and hook placement are paramount. In less than a second, audiences should be drawn in discerning why the video is relevant, in what way it is relatable, or what problem it will solve. Storytelling pace must ensure that each visual holds attention and delivers essential information without inducing fatigue. The opening three seconds must be compelling enough to maintain viewership until the end card, which could express a call to action, storytelling conclusion, or brand revelation.

Given that YouTube Shorts is a viral video platform associated with music and entertainment, lighter narratives (e.g., comedic, entertaining, memorable) often resonate better than heavier ones.

In-Feed Video Ads (Discovery Feed)

On Discovery’s home feed, in-feed video ads resemble Discovery display ads but include video elements. On YouTube and other platforms, high-quality thumbnails and compelling captions are critical for viewer engagement, as these ads are visible across multiple formats. To enhance understanding of similar placements, refer to the creative best practices section.

Discovery Feed in-feed video ads engage users in the Discovery Feed, a visually immersive space ideal for storytelling. Proximity to the content inventory offers a unique opportunity for brands to showcase their offerings. For optimal engagement, consider design, copy, and captioning principles outlined in the creative best practices section. Capitalize on the open thumbnail area to capture users’ visual attention and incorporate captions when appropriate or necessary to communicate key messages.

Product and Lifestyle Creative Combinations

Demand Gen ads pair product-specific images with lifestyle/context visuals for visual storytelling at scale. Synthesizing product and lifestyle creatives in a meaningful way evokes desire, creates aspirational storytelling, and maintains relevance for all audiences.

Product and lifestyle combinations seamlessly align with Dynamic Product Ads during the prospecting phase to fulfill relevance and product discovery. Data feeds allow for hyper-relevant ads based on product catalog, feed attributes, and audience interest in specific products. When combined with well-orchestrated lifestyle creatives, storytelling improves, motivating clicks from warmer audiences who showed intent in certain products.

How to Create a Winning Demand Gen Campaign (Step-by-Step)

Simplified guidelines for creating a Demand Gen campaign follow a five-step sequence. First, define the marketing objective, as this shapes whether the goal is customer action or brand awareness, and informs decisions on bidding strategy, creative assets, and measurement alignment. Second, upload assets   video, image, headline, and call-to-action. As an AI-centric format, Demand Gen thrives on diverse creative variances to provide a wide range of options for Google’s automated system. Third, build audience segments and prepare data signals for targeting; Demand Gen supports custom intent, first-party data, Customer Match, affinity, and lookalike audiences. Fourth, select a bidding strategy based on the campaign objective: either Max Conversions to optimize for volume or Target CPA to maximize cost efficiency. Finally, launch the campaign and let Google’s AI drive bidding, placements, and data signal integration. Monitoring is critical, with time-sensitive areas for review outlined in other sections of the guide.

Step 3, building audience segments and data signals, is an essential Demand Gen element explored separately. Lookalike audiences (a new Demand Gen targeting method), as well as Custom Intent, Custom Affinity, first-party data, and Customer Match integration, are defined for deeper analysis. Setting up audience segments correctly is critical, as these signals play a pivotal role at all levels: targeting, contextual reach, dynamic messaging, and bidding.

Step 1: Set Your Marketing Objective (Awareness, Action, or Conversion)

Demand Gen ushers audiences into a world where intent-fueled creative and a technological halo combine to build brands and shorten sales cycles   all from a single feed. Getting a Demand Gen campaign right means beginning with the right objective. By clearly defining what counts as success, and which outcomes matter most, advertisers help Google’s AI decide on the creative fluidity, bidding strategy, and wide-open multi-channel targeting that enable the combination of reach and adaptability that generates conversions.

Demand Gen advertising opens the door to an expanded view of marketing. Instead of looking only for buyers, or only for people who might become future buyers, advertisers become instead   day by day, ad by ad, moment by moment   present to motivate purchases. Contrast that with simply using Demand Gen to generate new sales and see the wider possible application across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail: Demand Gen touches engaged customers daily, generates sales throughout the buying cycle, and readies non-customers for re-engagement.

What’s the right starting point for each campaign? Start by defining from the beginning what action counts as a conversion that should drive bidding. Of course, that’s not hard to do for a campaign driving product sales   revenue drives e-commerce   but it’s proven far harder to pin down that similar clarity for conversion rate optimized campaigns.

Step 2: Upload Assets (Images, Videos, Headlines, CTAs)

All uploaded creatives must be visually appealing, comply with Google Ads policies, and meet all technical specification requirements. Ad assets can be uploaded following the recommended approach below:

1. Image Assets 

   Image assets should present the brand and product in the best way possible. Dynamic formats will automatically select the right image for the right audience to improve performance. Here are some recommendations:  

   – Ensure a mix of product-only and lifestyle images to serve different audience intents. Product-centered assets work best for retargeting, whereas lifestyle visuals connect with audiences in the discovery stage of the funnel.  

   – Use a human touch. Images that show a human face, model, or product in use generate more engagement. Using motion in static assets can also capture attention.  

   – Ensure a clear foreground–background separation. Good lighting, contrast, and framing are key. Bright colors enhance click-through rates.  

   – Follow the first impression rule: first impressions cannot be retracted. A strong visual hierarchy ensures viewers see the most important information first.

2. Video Assets  

   Short-form video ads in the YouTube Shorts feed should hook viewers’ attention in the first few seconds. Here are some tips for engaging content:  

   – Captions help communicate the message without sound, especially for Shorts, where most views happen without sound.  

   – Create a moving cue. Movement attracts attention. Use camera movement as a cue that something is happening in the video content.  

   – Follow visual storytelling rules. Video storytelling must have a pace, an escalating story arc, and a start, middle, and end, even if brief. Each frame should build toward the last.

3. Headline and Call-to-Action (CTA) Texts

   Headline and CTA texts should grab the audience’s attention and entice action. The options listed should appear in the recommended order of importance, but Google may optimize and switch the order based on results.

Step 3: Build Audience Segments and Data Signals

Demand Gen campaigns encompass four primary audience targeting dimensions: lookalike audiences, custom intent audiences, affinity audiences, and first-party data. Creating lookalike audiences is new and essential for targeting across the purchasing funnel; custom intent and affinity audiences define soft upper-funnel audiences; and first-party data enables brands to leverage customer information.

Lookalike Audiences (New for Demand Gen)

Lookalikes are similar to Custom Audiences and primarily designed for upper-funnel awareness. Currently, the following sources for lookalikes are available, with minimum audience sizes for prospecting set at 1,000 first-party users. The engine identifies users similar to these 1K visitors in the Audience Link tool.

1. YouTube subscribers
2. Page engagement
3. Conversion actions
4. Website visitors
5. Customer Match audiences
6. Ad interaction

Custom Intent and Affinity Targeting

Custom intent groups users according to three behavioral signals. Interest reflects sites they’ve visited or content they’ve searched (e.g., keywords related to Datarama’s discovery tools). Intent captures recently searched keywords or queries in a particular category (e.g., cybersecurity detection and response), while custom affinity lets companies assemble audiences through keyword, URL, and topic criteria. With this feature, the audience shape matters more than size. Custom Intent can be utilized for Decision-Making or even Consideration, depending on product-market fit. These groups can be used to target the active-intent middle of the funnel, combining searches (high intent) with recent visits (consideration) for cross-channel continuity.

Affinity can be useful to maintain visibility in some upper-funnel areas where Demand Gen ads have a higher Click Engagement Rate like Luxury, Travel, and non-technology given the growing usage of Display as a passive research tool for generations. Perimeter banners on sites rich in relevant category intent can therefore also be activated for people browsing competitor content.

Step 4: Select Bidding Strategy (Max Conversions / Target CPA)

Align the bidding strategy with the campaign objective and the expected lifetime value of customer acquisition. Two strategies are available: 

**Maximize Conversions** focuses on driving immediate actions at any cost, while **Target CPA** seeks to achieve a specified average CPA. Select the latter if there are historical CPA insights that can be replicated.

Maximize Conversions uses Google’s bidding logic to prioritize immediate actions. It examines Auction-Time signals and can adjust bids based on changing context and predictive likelihood of action. Target CPA is more focused in that it seeks to maintain an average CPA aligned with brand or product guidelines. A combination of short- and long-term perspective can be achieved by using the Copilot feature, which brings multiple Smart Bids together to maximize Net Present Value (NPV) while enforcing CPA targets. For further insight into Smart Bidding logic, see “Smart Bidding and AI Optimization.”

Step 5: Launch and Let AI Optimize

Once a Demand Gen campaign is set up, it can be launched to allow Google AI to optimize performance. During the initial three weeks, monitoring should occur on a weekly basis to evaluate overall health, audience engagement, and asset effectiveness. Major issues may necessitate intervention, but adjustments should generally be avoided. Once sufficient data has been amassed, optimization insights can inform changes.

Monitoring cadence should increase if performance markedly improves, worsens, or fails to converge:

– A sudden CPA drop might indicate a more profitable audience that should be prioritized. 

– A sudden CPA spike identifies areas of concern that should prompt an audience or asset review. 

– If primary audiences exhibit high view rates, attention should shift to diagnosing underperforming audiences.

Demand Gen Audience Targeting Explained

Demand Gen audience targeting offers several ways to define core segments. Lookalike audiences   a new feature for Demand Gen   let advertisers find new customers with characteristics similar to their existing buyers. These audiences use a seed audience to find users whose matching similarity exceeds a defined threshold. Sources for the seed audience include Customer Lists, Google Ads Conversion Actions, Google Analytics audiences, and Google Ads account data. Using a larger seed audience increases reach.

Two additional targeting methods have existed in other Google ad formats for some time. Custom Intent audiences allow advertisers to engage consumers who are actively searching for specific products or services. They can either curate a Custom Intent audience by defining specific keywords, URLs, and apps related to the offering, or use Google’s predefined in-market audiences. Affinity audiences expand targeting to users whose interests, lifestyles, or passions align with the advertised topic. Advertisers can also leverage first-party data from their Customer Match audience lists, allowing them to retarget existing customers and nurture prospects throughout the buying cycle.

As Demand Gen campaigns unify Google’s audience signals, advertisers can easily reach users across multiple touchpoints. Acquisition campaigns can activate Customer Match segments using Custom Intent and Affinity signals to identify similar markets. Campaigns lower in the funnel can activate customers by leveraging Custom Intent and Affinity audiences. However, it’s essential to set up comprehensive audience tracking and attribution so that different touchpoints within the buying cycle are properly acknowledged.

Lookalike Audiences (New for Demand Gen)

When building Lookalike Audiences, advertisers don’t need to create them from scratch, as Google can automatically generate them. The consultant/advertiser specifies a source seed audience from one or more of the following origin types: a first-party audience within the current Google Ads account (Customer Match or similar audience); an audience from another source-linked Google Ads property (e.g., YouTube, performance max); an audience from an integrated tool (e.g., GA360); or a previously created lookalike audience.

Google assesses the seed audience against the group of all users and selects a subset of users who are similar in significant ways, aiming to find as many appropriate users as possible within the lookalike percentage range. The results can be especially interesting when the audience is small and the lookalike percentage is high; if the audience is small, lower similarity thresholds are evaluated; and if it’s large, higher similarity thresholds are evaluated.

Custom Intent and Affinity Targeting

Custom intent and affinity targeting enable marketers to reach audiences based on specific purchase intent or interests. Custom intent targeting helps advertisers reach users actively considering relevant products or services; advertisers can either create segments or use pre-defined categories based on search activity in Google. Affinity targeting captures audiences based on long-term interests and lifestyle, allowing advertisers to engage users organically. Affinity segments are auto-generated based on browsing behavior, and advertisers can select different affinity subsegments as well as add their own.

Advertising professionals eager to leverage first-party data in Demand Gen campaigns can create Customer Match segments directly in the campaign-building interface using lists uploaded to Google Ads. Three main methods are available: by email address, by phone number, or by exposing website visitors. Since first-party data is recognized by the Google ecosystem, it can also be used to create or enrich lookalike audiences. Non-sensitive first-party data should also be added to Google Ads and synchronized regularly for optimal resource consumption and most data utility.

First-Party Data and Customer Match Integration

Powerful first-party data signals improve campaign performance, audience targeting, and asset optimization but only when they are created and nourished. User lists can easily be uploaded to Google or regularly synchronized for targeting via Customer Match ideal for customer re-engagement, lookalike modeling, or both. Dynamic product feeds and first-party data help optimize creative and targeting for eCommerce brands.

Campaigns can be set up to tap into first-party data signals in three ways: uploading or periodically synchronizing user lists with Customer Match; using a first-party data feed to support Product Listing Ads via Google Merchant Center (dynamic ads); and supplying a dynamic feed with images and titles for a Video Action feed with rich creatives across partner sites. Both Customer Match and dynamic product feeds enable media capabilities to connect and convert with users who already know the brand those whose attention the brand is trying to capture again, with consistent and relevant messages wherever they go.

Cross-Channel Retargeting for Performance Max Integration

Successful marketing across channels, through a single flow, requires cross-channel measurement to capture how Customers switch from device to device and channel to channel during their final buyer journey. Companies must track not only hard conversions when a user sees a Demand Gen asset about a product and clicks to buy it on the website but also soft conversions: when a user engages with a Demand Gen asset and then goes to the website directly on a different channel to search/become a user/buy a product.

This is particularly important when connecting Demand Gen with Performance Max. Demand Gen is not only about getting new contacts, but also about creating prospective Customers who may have had or entered a new need for the product category soon after seeing the advertisement their intention may still be latent. Once a new contact base has been reached, these people should be retargeted with ads on other channels, particularly Performance Max ads that best respond to bottom-of-funnel needs and tend to maximize ROI.

Creative Best Practices for Demand Gen Campaigns

To capture audience attention, activate intent, and elicit action, Demand Gen creatives must be designed to stop the scroll, speak to intent, and show the offer clearly. Break down each of these principles into guidance for design, copy, and calls to action.

Designing for Scroll-Stopping Visuals

With Demand Gen ads providing the unified reach of Video Action and Discovery while addressing audience intent, the quality and creativity of the message become paramount. Scroll-stopping visuals capture attention and lend impact to the creative narrative. Visual hierarchy, motion, and color all help to emphasize why audiences should care and what action to take next.

Because scrolling on mobile devices presents audiences with an uninterrupted visual diet, what and how they see absorb their attention. Elements placed in the center of the frame technique have precedence in viewers’ minds. Audiences also tend to notice elements that move, whether image motion in carousels or video assets. High-contrast colors and colors opposing color schemes attract viewers’ eyes. By highlighting the most compelling story elements in compelling ways, creative teams make their Demand Gen campaigns resonate more deeply.

Aligning Creatives with Audience Intent

Demand Gen allows advertisers to connect with potential customers at all stages of their purchase journey, from awareness to conversion. Campaign success depends on tailoring creatives to audience intent. Aligning creative concepts with appropriate audience segments raises ad relevance, improving performance. The table below outlines recommended concepts for top-, middle-, and bottom-of-funnel audiences, guiding planning, keyword targeting, and audience-building decisions.

For awareness (upper-funnel) audiences, the recommended story concepts are overview and reason to believe. The overview concept should introduce broader context, generating buzz and seeding keywords. The reason-to-believe concept should focus on endorsement, revealing credentials and installation details for search-friendly visibility. The goal is to raise intent to search or engage, establishing broad considerations that can be refined through first-party data. It’s advisable to avoid features, skews, price, and product concepts that are likely to bore, confuse, or deter.

For interest (middle-funnel) audiences, focus on the problem-solving or use-case concepts. Creative should define an audience pain point and explain how it can be addressed through the product or service on offer. Ideally, copy should call out the challenge and offer the solution in the headline, followed by persuasive execution of “how it works”. Attention should be drawn to offers in features or offers concepts for products at a favorable price or promotion.

Engagement (lower-funnel) audiences require test-drive, product-specific, demo, or price-concept creatives. The test-drive concept invites consumers to sample the product, while the product-specific concept directs attention to a particular product line. The smash cut, interaction, and full-video demo concepts leverage video sequencing to engage intent-rich audiences. The price concept directs attention to specific products at a particularly favorable price or promotion.

Testing Variations Using AI Asset Insights

A/B tests provide unequivocal signals for optimization decisions. Finding the best-performing variants is key to scaling campaigns efficiently. Steps for an effective A/B testing strategy include:

1. Design a Strategic A/B Test

   – One asset component should change while others remain constant. Changes can involve creative type, visual theme, or CTA wording.

   – Use Asset Insights to stimulate inspiration. AI analyses real-time campaign performance and detects signals indicating winning asset variants. Recommendations can vary based on account data and campaign performance.

2. Estimate Traffic Split and Test Impact

   – Different audience groups yield different conversion rates, yet will also require budget and therefore divert traffic. Keep this in mind when deciding.

   – Global traffic split across all running A/B tests must be at least 10% for any single test to produce meaningful recommendations.

Insights highlight which creative variants help deploy the right messages to the right audiences at the right times. While asset signals add efficiency, assess the full-funnel effect.

Advanced Optimization Strategies for Demand Gen in 2025

A variety of dynamic assets are now commonly used in performance marketers’ campaigns. Advanced storytelling also features prominently as brands build emotional connections with their audiences (different people respond to different forms of storytelling; for example, documentary-style storytelling works for some audiences but not others). Brands are increasingly using Demand Gen campaigns to establish these emotional connections with their audiences, before using Performance Max campaigns to encourage audiences to take action like visiting their websites, installing their apps, or buying their products. For brands still focused on marketing for lower-funnel performance (and others looking for creative types of marketing), aligning Demand Gen and Performance Max campaigns can sharpen strategies and improve results. Brands have also been using voice search and visual search for some time.

Dynamic Product Ads for eCommerce Brands

Demand Gen campaigns excel at driving eCommerce actions through bottom-of-funnel narratives, particularly when supported by Dynamic Product Ads. By linking Demand Gen to your Merchant Center product data feed and then applying product feed elements in image carousel or short-form video creatives, Demand Gen boosts engagement with explorers who are considering the purchase without purely explicit intent. When these shopping groups directly engage with these dynamic creatives, dynamic ads can deliver high conversion rate and low cost per acquisition.

The combination of dynamic ads with lifestyle context or storytelling elements can also strengthen the emotional connection with the audience, thereby lifting both upper- and lower-funnel brand metrics.

Using Storytelling for Emotional Brand Connections

Narrative structures that resonate with intent audiences; tie to ‘Leveraging YouTube Shorts for Engagement’.

The power of storytelling has long appealed to marketers but digital platforms often emphasize quick engagement over emotional resonance. Demand Gen changes that equation. By reaching audiences showing high purchase interest, Demand Gen campaigns have the potential to drive actions like click engagement and soft conversions. Capturing those audiences’ attention with compelling video stories that build emotional brand connections around product features will increase the likelihood that the brand stays top-of-mind or even considered when an on-the-fence audience departs YouTube’s platform.

Evolving audience consumption habits and media formats, particularly the growth of YouTube Shorts, also play into this strategy. YouTube Shorts naturally lend themselves to a traditional hook-story-then-close storytelling structure, where the brand message is conveyed within an optimum length of 30-Second and 1-Minute videos, ideally connected through a relatable narrative arc that ties together different products or services offered by the brand. Addressing the audience’s need states within the story quickly draws in the audience, and portraying characters that are relatable to the audience enables them to feel an emotional resonance and connection with the brand, planting the seed for further recall.

Leveraging YouTube Shorts for Engagement

Short-form video has exploded in popularity across all social media platforms. For advertisers, the challenge is creating compelling stories at the shorter length with the same intent connection and emotional resonance. To make matters worse, unlike long-form videos where a four-second hook can get an audience to watch the full video, the attention span for short-form video content is much shorter as well. Companies must hook viewers in the first 1-2 seconds and then maintain that attention for a 15-second story.

Demonstrating the product and its value proposition early is the best approach for these videos. Additional details and supporting visuals may then appear in the middle of the ad, but it’s the beginning and end of the video that is critical. Viewers need to see the product in use and then the suggested action before they swipe away. Brands can use View Rate and Click Engagement Rate as indicators for tuning and optimizing these ads. High View Rates indicate that viewers were engaged with the story, while low Click Engagement Rates suggest the message isn’t commercially effective enough to warrant action.

Integrating with Performance Max for Full-Funnel Efficiency

Demand Gen and Performance Max work best as a connected system. Performance Max’s adaptive asset and predictive strength perform full-funnel, cross-channel optimization, while Demand Gen addresses upper-funnel audiences in all formats. For a complementary approach, begin with Demand Gen and let Performance Max handle bottom-funnel engagements. Start with broad targeting to generate audience data, then integrate by adding Performance Max.

Delineate roles early. Demand Gen addresses top-funnel touchpoints across platforms, reaching a broad collection of audiences. Performance Max capitalizes on the foundation, automatically delivering ads for the audiences best positioned to convert. Neither requires a separate website tag; users can concentrate on Demand Gen while Performance Max does the attribution and optimization work.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Demand Gen Campaigns

Running demand generation campaigns can be complex, but certain practices can jeopardize results. Avoid these common mistakes for a smoother experience.

Using Static Creatives Instead of Adaptive Assets. Demand gen campaigns rely on creative machine learning to drive conversions through active adaptation static assets hinder this process. Marketers neglecting asset diversity may fail to meet audience needs and intention, so AI-testing methods with either third-party or creation of multiple variants are essential.

Neglecting Audience Segmentation. Using the entire customer or interest base within a single audience segment limits relevance. Considerations of overlapping intent categories, switching costs, perceived risk, and brand loyalty are crucial for driving demand gen asset engagement. Taking advantage of all possibilites (lookalike audiences, first-party integrations) ensures that audiences receive tailored narratives at the right stage of their journey.

Failing to Track Soft and Assisted Conversions. Measurement neglect of soft and assisted conversions prevents businesses from acquiring complete cross-channel and full-funnel performance insights. Making the investments to use these metrics allows for optimization analysis and a greater understanding of how an audience engages across the marketing journey, ultimately resulting in better-performing campaigns.

Using Static Creatives Instead of Adaptive Assets

Static creatives fail to harness the machine-learning power of the Demand Gen platform. Google enables and encourages the use of adaptive asset uploads that combine multiple images, videos, and headlines, letting AI test, optimize, and select for performance. Skipping this when possible is risky: the best-performing ad on any given impression is not always a static image.

Creative insights are thus best derived by testing certain aspects with multiple variants. Defaulting to a single asset limits the ability to rapidly respond to trend changes without the overhead of scheduling or manual intervention. Experimenting with audience alignment, incorporating user-generated content, or letting AI find the best-performing style for different audiences and doing all these things at once are key to Demand Gen campaigns’ growth potential.

Neglecting Audience Segmentation

Generic audience targeting diminishes marketing effectiveness. Without segment specificity, Demand Gen messages lack personal resonance, diluting engagement power across channels. Segmentation enables tailoring message content and tone to audience desires and affinities, enhancing VTRs and click-through rates. Usage of first-party data or custom affinity audiences further strengthens relevance.

Three approaches ensure targeted messaging: using Lookalike Audiences, leveraging first-party data for segmentation, and ingested Customer Match data for targeting. In eCommerce, product catalog data enables Dynamic Product Ads, and established Performance Max audiences support cross-channel retargeting. Listing and communicating uniqueness to these groups reduces wasted impressions and generates new leads. Consider these options for segmentation: Lookalike Audiences (new for Demand Gen), Custom Intent and Affinity segmentation, and First-Party Data and Customer Match integration.

Failing to Track Soft and Assisted Conversions

Optimization and definition of success in any demand generation campaign go far beyond last-click conversion attribution across Google channels. Without a comprehensive measurement strategy that captures the full impact on customer journeys, brands miss the true value of demand generation.

Using a last-click, single-channel approach means missing the indirect and nurturing impact of demand generation campaigns. Although it’s impossible to directly track each influence on a customer journey, Google provides several models to measure these softer but equally important touchpoints. Awareness of soft conversion events such as views, engagement, and taking actions in upstream audiences is vital in assessing overall spending effectiveness.

A key use case is a cross-channel website app, particularly when incorporating targeting lookalike audiences in adoption stages and actively-based cross-channel retargeting. The demand generation campaign drives both direct on-site actions conversion and supports sponsoring channels offering higher engagement involvement stages.

Key Metrics to Measure in Demand Gen

The business value of Demand Gen campaigns becomes clearer when associated key metrics are defined, starting with those most relevant for campaign setup, followed by diagnostics for cross-channel performance measurement.

Demand Gen campaigns target high-intent audiences across Google’s Discover, YouTube, and Gmail properties with visually engaging full-funnel assets, yet businesses nevertheless neglect to track their interactions. Highly relevant for lead generation and future conversions, these early-stage engagements should be captured, especially View Rate (VTR) and Click Engagement Rate (CER). For these reasons, they serve as flow metrics. As marketers seek soft and/or assisted conversions and measure traffic across a wide array of channels, businesses should account for VTR and CER alongside CPA and Conversion Rate metrics. Conversion attribution should also reflect Demand Gen’s top-of-funnel potential, feeding future bottom-line actions from target audiences.

The VTR quantifies how many times viewers of an ad unit elected to view it. Ads that registered sufficient impressions, yet relatively low engagement during prescribing fill times, signal a creative issue. A low CER indicates that viewers of the ad that selected the ad didn’t complete the action it sought to drive. Both metrics should sit alongside CPA and Conversion Rate within broader Demand Gen measurement frameworks.

View Rate (VTR) and Click Engagement Rate (CER)

Define calculation, benchmarks, and interpretation; connect to ‘Creative Performance Insights’.

The view rate (VTR) measures Demand Gen ad engagement by calculating the ratio of views to impressions, while the click engagement rate (CER) assesses user clicks on either the ad or the clickable portion of the ad. Both metrics are generally indicative of asset quality, as higher VTRs and CERs reflect the ability to drive engagement. Demand Gen ads typically achieve a view rate ranging from 2% to 15%, with a threshold of ≥5% considered “good” and ≥10% judged “very good” depending on design and placement. The click engagement rate is generally favorable when above 0.20%.

Actual determination of creative success, however, goes beyond these rates: A Demand Gen ad that garners significant audience interest and engagement should lead to conversions, ideally accompanied by low-cost cross-device exposure. This deeper insight can be informed by an analysis of connection patterns across different metrics, guiding strategy adjustments for future campaigns. Such signals can serve to substantiate testing insights when correlated with key connection metrics; creative testing remains an essential recommendation.

Conversion Rate and CPA

User engagement with a campaign drives funnel progression, while user-initiated conversion events yield profit. In Demand Gen, key indicators of campaign success are Conversion Rate (CR) and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). Conversion Rate indicates how effectively a campaign converts the “touch” audience to the conversion action (“very hot” audience), while CPA highlights how efficiently Demand Gen interactions translate to bottom-line actions.

Conversion Rate (CR): The proportion of users who completed the action defined as a conversion within the campaign. It appears in the UI of Demand Gen campaigns, and the reporting massively benefits from having an accurate and relevant set of conversion data linked to it. There are so many other variables that influence user likelihood to convert; removing the ones that do not have enough signals on their own is vital to improving the statistical relevance of the Conversion Rate. A Demand Gen campaign can generate an absolutely incredible Conversion Rate, but if there aren’t enough conversion actions coming in to actually generate data that is statistically relevant, then relying on that stat to judge the Demand Gen campaign isn’t productive. Smaller is better.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA):  Determined by: CPA = Total Cost / Conversions. CPA is generally best kept to a level where at least the customer lifetime value is comfortably higher than the CPA value being generated, but the Demand Gen campaign also sits at that point where it is helping to optimize the channels that are feeding the bottom-of-funnel channels.

Creative Performance Insights

Two methods help advertisers assess the performance of their Demand Gen creative. First, soft and assisted conversions typically occur higher in the funnel, such as video views and engaged views of a Discover post. Monitoring these activities helps gauge the ad’s effectiveness in reaching a relevant audience. However, establishing whether a Demand Gen campaign is performing requires considering the combination of multiple signals, not just a single one. For example, a below-average Video View Rate (VTR) combined with a high Click Engagement Rate (CER) may suggest the audience strongly engages once they see the ad, even if many do not view it a sufficient length. Conversely, a combination of high VTR, low CER, and high engagement with the broader audience may indicate a less relevant message.

Second, AI Asset Insights leans upon the performance of specific creative components. Dynamic creatives take this process further by dynamically changing text, image, or audio/video content based on audience targeting. For example, automated “creative variants” display different product lines to distinct user clusters, allowing brands to appreciate the effectiveness of specific variants according to target. Therefore, these insights enable brands to efficiently refine targeting and segregate audience groups, ultimately optimizing campaign performance.

Cross-Channel Attribution Results

Cross-channel attribution results indicate Demand Gen Campaigns’ importance from top to bottom of the sales funnel. Cross-channel attribution is essential both for measuring Demand Gen campaign effectiveness and for informing Flywheel strategies (that is, driving business earlier in the customer journey, leveraging demand signals, and re-engaging interested audiences). Where tracking allows for cross-channel attribution, Demand Gen campaigns can be measured not just by direct conversions but also by conversions these campaigns assisted: the first interaction in the customer journey across multiple channels.

Cross-channel attribution results show that Demand Gen campaigns accelerate customer transformation. Demand Gen campaigns drive interactions lower in the funnel, with faster-selling and longer-sales-cycles products closing 9% and 33% faster, respectively. These campaigns also drive a lower cost per conversion for direct-response campaigns. Although both upper-funnel and lower-funnel Demand Gen campaigns recorded higher conversion rates than historically lower-funnel campaigns, the funnel progression of conversions reflects the ability of Demand Gen campaigns to engage customers considering a purchase, with 85%-90% targeting interest-based Custom Intent segments.

Future of Demand Gen Campaigns (2025–2030)

Generative AI will permeate the Demand Gen ecosystem, shaping creative production, enabling voice and visual search, and facilitating video personalization at scale across YouTube, Google Discover, and Gmail.

Generative AI will have a major impact on the Demand Gen asset production process. With tools like Midjourney, Dall-E, ChatGPT, and Runway   which assist marketers and creative teams in the conception and production of narrative- and image-based content   these tasks will become faster, easier, and often far cheaper. As brands begin to develop high-quality image and video assets enriched with AI, the Demand Gen campaign strategy is set to become not just a useful solution for solving a marketing challenge, but perhaps the most effective. Brands in verticals that have yet to adopt Demand Gen alongside Performance Max should see huge value acceleration using the unique strategy. The Demand Gen ad format is likely to undergo significant development over the next two to three years, with the launch of Video Action on YouTube Shorts paving the way for full integration of this new format.

Generative AI in Creative Production

Generative AI will profoundly reshape creative production across formats, categories, and industries. Hyperautomation will enable significant efficiencies while improving the scale and quality of generated assets. Demand Gen timing is propitious: as Prepper MrBeast would say, “Get the best people for the job. Wait for AI to do the job instead.”

More advanced or less mainstream tools may be less impactful until they become ubiquitous. At present, however, Generative AI is being blended into widespread platforms to drive output for audiences, in particular, Google and Meta, and beyond. Little wonder, therefore, that Campaign Group reconvened the world’s leading artists to share how to leverage these transformative technologies within DEI guidelines, and everything from the breedless herd principle through to emblematic spin-offs like Barbie and Oppenheimer became iconic integrated campaigns across thousands of partners – UnSeen and Nazism were just two of the courageous standalones on show.

Voice and Visual Search Integration

The growing adoption of voice assistants, visual search within apps like Pinterest and Google Lens, and the potential shift to voice-first interfaces will fundamentally reshape advertising. Integrating voice and visual search with Demand Gen campaigns will unlock numerous creative opportunities. Marketers can start leaning into this growth area now focusing on visual assets and concepts tailored for longer, voice -search queries and prepare for Demand Gen where visuals and voice search intents converge. Integrating Demand Gen assets with voice search will also be crucial in achieving large-scale personalization of video ads, e.g., video ads dynamically adapted to each viewer’s user profile. Voice and visual search will also allow Demand Gen campaigns to power a new generation of visual search ads, similar to Digital Discovery Moments.

Voice assistants are dramatically changing search behavior. Whether on Google, Alexa, or Apple’s Siri, people are asking questions, and companies focused on answering those inquiries will see amazing brand-results. Brands looking to take advantage of this trend must think about the style and structure of the content that they create. Questions often have a longer, more narrative feel vs. the bite-sized question/answer format. Brands can also leverage visual search platforms like Pinterest Lens, shopping searches within Google Search and Image Search, and stock image search engines like Shutterstock to inform their creative decisions. These search platforms work in English, the native language of the vast majority of their users.

Personalized Video Ads at Scale

As interactive video ads become increasingly central to digital media strategies, the opportunity to engage audiences across contexts is clear. But producing video to align with the different browsing stages and life stages of potential customers   from product discovery, research and decision-making to ownership and advocacy   can be hard for even the most sophisticated brands. Scale personalization to make video sense for all these customer journeys, driven in part by generative AI.

The era of one-size-fits-all video ads is coming to an end. Users’ online experiences are becoming more relevant, and advertisers want their ads to feel just as relevant. Using personalization to scale video advertising across different audiences is now table stakes. How can brands scale this personalization without needing a bespoke video execution for each audience they want to reach?

Why Demand Gen Is the Future of Visual + Intent Advertising

Demand Gen represents the future of advertising at Google. Integrating the power of Google’s AI engine with the unified reach of YouTube, Discover, and Gmail, Demand Gen campaigns capture visual intent signals in moments of discovery and feed these audiences with engaging creatives that motivate exploration and discovery. For advertisers, Demand Gen campaigns provide what Tim Armstrong termed “the holy grail” of advertising   the ability to efficiently drive conversions with ads that also drive brand-building engagement along the way. To capitalize on this opportunity, marketers should develop and execute Demand Gen campaigns with a Demand Gen mindset: evaluating audiences, creators, and assets not just in terms of hard conversions, but also for their ability to re-engage customers during the purchase cycle or seed cross-channel retargeting pools.

Planning for Demand Gen in 2025 and Beyond Demand Gen is the first campaign type to benefit from Google’s portfolio convergence strategy, and several other programs are expected to merge or integrate into Demand Gen-like flows in the future. As Demand Gen matures, three advanced strategies will help activate its full-funnel potential: leveraging YouTube Shorts as a customer re-engagement driver; using storytelling techniques to create emotional connections during initial audience exposures; and integrating Demand Gen with Performance Max for full-funnel efficiency.