Google Demand Gen Campaigns: A Practical 2026 Guide

What is a Demand Gen campaign in Google Ads?

A Demand Gen campaign is a Google Ads campaign type that shows image, video, carousel and product ads to audiences you choose, on YouTube, Discover, Gmail, Google Maps and the Google Display Network. It targets people, not searches. There are no keywords, and the ads never appear on Google Search results pages.

Google built it for advertisers who know paid social. Most ads appear in feeds, you pick audiences much as you would on Meta, and Google says the campaign can reach up to 3 billion people a month (About Demand Gen campaigns). Its job is to reach people before they search for you, then turn that interest into visits, leads and sales.

What did Demand Gen replace?

Demand Gen has absorbed three older campaign types, so older guides and reports still use their names:

• Discovery campaigns. Google launched Demand Gen in October 2023 as "the next generation of Discovery campaigns" and upgraded Discovery campaigns through early 2024 (Google's announcement).
• Video action campaigns. No new ones since April 2025, and Google confirms every remaining campaign was upgraded to Demand Gen as of May 2026 (Google Ads Help).
• Display campaigns. A migration tool opened in June 2026. Next, new Display campaigns can only be built inside Demand Gen and the rest move automatically, with the transition expected to finish by 2027 (Google's May 2026 post).

Oct 2023Discovery campaigns start upgrading to Demand Gen

Early 2024Planned end of Discovery upgrades

Apr 2026Last Video action campaigns become Demand Gen

Jun 2026Display migration tool opens

By 2027Display transition expected to finish

Where do Demand Gen ads show in 2026?

As of October 2026, Demand Gen ads can show in five channels: YouTube (Shorts, in-stream and in-feed), Discover, Gmail, Google Maps and the Google Display Network. You choose channels per ad group with channel controls. Google recommends the default, All Google channels, and the Display Network is an optional add-on to it.

Billing rules from Google's Demand Gen FAQ.

Channel controls sit in each ad group under Channels. Choose All Google channels or Let me choose, then pick from YouTube in-stream, in-feed and Shorts, Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Display Network (Channel controls in Demand Gen). Google advises judging the campaign on overall cost per conversion, not channel by channel, because the system buys the cheapest conversions wherever they are. To force volume onto one channel, give it its own ad group with a higher target CPA, at some cost to efficiency.

Demand Gen vs Performance Max vs Search: which should you use?

Use Search to capture people already searching, Performance Max to chase conversions across every Google channel from one budget, and Demand Gen to reach audiences you choose with visual ads before they search. Most accounts we manage add Demand Gen after Search or PMax, once tracking works and they have video to feed it.

Comparison built from Google's When to use Demand Gen table. Our guide to Performance Max campaigns covers the controls PMax does give you.

When Demand Gen beats Performance Max or Search

• Your product sells on looks or a demo. Apparel, home goods, food and fitness show better in a video than in a text ad.
• Search volume is capped. You already win the profitable searches, and more Search budget only buys pricier clicks.
• You have first-party lists. Site visitors, past purchasers and YouTube viewers feed remarketing and lookalikes.
• You want control PMax will not give. You pick the audience, channel and creative per ad group, and test them in A/B experiments.
• You are launching something nobody searches for yet. A new product or brand needs awareness before searches exist.

When to wait

Hold off if conversion tracking is not working, if you cannot fund roughly 10 times your target CPA per day, or if you only have one landscape banner. Emergency home-service work (burst pipes, lockouts) comes from search; Demand Gen fits planned jobs such as remodels, solar or a new HVAC system.

How does audience targeting work in Demand Gen?

You build audiences in each ad group from your own data, lookalike segments, custom segments, Google's interest segments and demographics. Optimized targeting, which Google recommends keeping on, lets the system reach people beyond those audiences, so your selections work more like signals than fences.

• Your data segments. Website visitors, YouTube viewers and contact lists you upload. Our guide to Google Ads remarketing covers how to build these lists.
• Lookalike segments. People who resemble a seed list, such as past purchasers. Search and Performance Max do not offer them.
• Custom segments. Audiences you define yourself; Google suggests 10 to 15 search terms that show purchase intent.
• Interests and demographics. Affinity, in-market and life-event segments, plus age, gender, parental status and household income.

Lookalike segments changed in March 2026

A lookalike segment starts from a seed list and a reach level: narrow, balanced or broad, which used to mean the 2.5%, 5% or 10% of people in your target location most like the seed. Since March 2026, Google has been switching Demand Gen lookalikes to a suggestion mode in phases (Lookalike segments). The seed list and reach level now act as signals, and the system may go outside the threshold if it predicts conversions.

Lookalikes before March 2026

• Reach slider is a hard limit (2.5%, 5% or 10%)
• Seed list needed at least 100 users
• Ads stay inside the similarity threshold

Lookalikes as suggestions (2026)

• Seed list and reach level are signals
• The 100-user minimum no longer applies
• Ads may reach people outside the threshold
• Opt out through Google's form; interface control promised later in 2026

Optimized targeting and audience signals

Optimized targeting is selected by default when you build an ad group (Create a Demand Gen campaign). It looks past your chosen audiences, and past the demographics you picked, for people likely to convert. Leave it on for prospecting. Turn it off in a remarketing ad group, or that ad group stops being remarketing.

A starting structure for most stores: one remarketing ad group (site visitors and cart abandoners from the last 30 days) and one prospecting ad group (a lookalike of past purchasers plus a custom segment), with purchasers excluded from prospecting. Keep ad groups few; Google suggests merging those with fewer than about 30 conversions in 30 days (Display to Demand Gen guide).

Which bidding strategies does Demand Gen support?

Demand Gen supports six strategies: Maximize clicks, Target CPC, Maximize conversions, Target CPA, Maximize conversion value and Target ROAS. Manual CPC is not available. Google recommends a daily budget of at least 10 times your target CPA and about 50 conversions before you change bids.

Sources: Demand Gen performance guide and value-based bidding for Demand Gen. Our guide to Google Ads bidding strategies explains each one.

Google's rules for a stable campaign, from the same pages:

• Start on Maximize conversions; switch to a target after at least 50 conversions.
• Move bids 5% to 10% a week, never more than 15%.
• After a switch to value bidding, change nothing for 14 days.
• Avoid changing the conversion goal of a live campaign; start a new one.

Demand Gen buys more of whatever you count, so bid on the action you care about, such as a purchase, and track lighter steps like add to cart as secondary goals. Clean Google Ads conversion tracking comes first.

Example: budgeting a Demand Gen test for a store

For example, a store selling $90 linen bedding sets keeps a 40% contribution margin, so it breaks even at $36 per order, the same math as break-even ROAS in our ROAS formula guide. It wants a $30 target CPA, and Google's rule says $300 a day. That is too much for a test, so it starts a product feed campaign on Maximize conversions at $100 a day, the minimum Google suggests for feed campaigns on that strategy. At about $30 per order, it reaches 50 conversions in about 15 days, then sets a $30 Target CPA. These numbers are illustrative.

$36Break-even cost per order ($90 × 40% margin)

$300Google's suggested daily budget at a $30 target CPA

About 15 daysTo 50 conversions at $100 a day and $30 per order

How do Merchant Center product feeds work in Demand Gen?

Link Google Merchant Center to Google Ads, turn on Run a product feed campaign (or add the feed to an existing campaign), and Demand Gen builds shoppable ads from your product images, titles and prices next to your own video and image creative. Google says established Demand Gen campaigns with large product selections typically see 33% more conversions after adding a feed (product feeds in Demand Gen).

What Google requires and recommends:

• Shopping ads turned on as a marketing method in Merchant Center. New feeds can take up to 3 days to approve.
• At least 4 products to qualify for all placements; Google's best practice is 50.
• Square (1:1) product images for the best coverage, at 500 × 500 pixels or larger if you want YouTube ads on TV screens.
• A short_title under about 65 characters, and item_group_id so variants do not show as duplicate images.
• One feed label per campaign. Regional availability and pricing feeds are not supported.
• Both an image-and-products ad and a video-and-products ad, each with one headline and one description for a store-wide message such as free shipping.

Two limits matter. A campaign created with Run a product feed campaign can only hold product ads, and carousel ads are not available with a Merchant Center feed. Google's A/B experiments now support a test of the same campaign with and without a feed, which is the clean way to check the 33% claim on your own catalog (Demand Gen experiments).

Demand Gen uses the same feed as Shopping, so our Google Shopping ads guide on titles, images and identifiers applies here too. Our Google Ads management for eCommerce runs one feed across Shopping, PMax and Demand Gen.

What are the Demand Gen ad specs in 2026?

Image ads need a 1.91:1 landscape image, a 1:1 square image and a square logo, with 4:5 and 9:16 vertical images recommended. Videos must be on YouTube, at least 5 seconds long, ideally 10 to 60 seconds, in landscape, square and vertical. Headlines run to 40 characters and descriptions to 90.

Images are .jpg or .png up to 5 MB, with up to 20 per ad. Google suggests 3 of each orientation.

Specs from Google's format requirements, image guidelines and video guidelines. Gmail crops the logo to a circle, so keep the mark centered.

How do you set up a Demand Gen campaign step by step?

Fix tracking, create the campaign with the right goal and budget, set location yourself, build two or three ad groups by audience, and load assets in every ratio. Then leave it alone until it has about 50 conversions. This is the order we use on new accounts.

1. Check conversion tracking. Your purchase or lead action should record a test conversion with the right value.
2. Create the campaign. Click Create, then Campaign, then Demand Gen. Turn on Run a product feed campaign only if the campaign will run product ads alone.
3. Choose the goal. Sales, Leads, Website traffic, App promotion, YouTube reach, views and engagements, or Local store visits and promotions. Then select the conversion goals to bid on.
4. Set location and language. By default they sit at the ad group level as All locations and All languages. Campaign level is the only way to use a radius, and you cannot switch levels after publishing.
5. Pick bidding and budget. Maximize conversions for a new campaign, or Target CPA with a daily budget of at least 10 times the target.
6. Build ad groups by audience. Remarketing in one, prospecting in another. Start with All Google channels and set optimized targeting per ad group.
7. Create ads. Video, image and carousel ads in landscape, square and vertical, plus a business name, logo and sitelinks.
8. Review view-through settings. New campaigns include view-through conversions in bidding by default; check the setting and your conversion windows.
9. Launch and wait. Allow 24 hours for ad review and about 50 conversions before you judge anything.

• Location set to the US (or your service area), not All locations
• Purchasers or past leads excluded from prospecting ad groups
• Vertical 9:16 video or image in every ad group
• Budget at or above 10 times target CPA, or Maximize conversions

How do you measure Demand Gen results?

Judge Demand Gen on click-through conversions, engaged-view conversions from video, and the lift it creates in brand searches and total sales. A last-click report alone undercounts it, because many people see a feed ad, do not click, and look you up later.

Definitions from Google's pages on engaged-view conversions and view-through conversion bidding.

1. ClickClick-through conversion; always wins credit

2. Engaged viewVideo only; counts if there was no click

3. ImpressionView-through; counts only if nothing above happened

Three things to check before you trust the numbers:

• View-through bidding is on by default. New campaigns count view-through conversions from video assets on YouTube, Display and Discover in the main Conversions column. Your store platform and other third-party tools do not receive these, so their totals run lower.
• Platform Comparable columns are for social comparisons only. Conversions (Platform Comparable) adds view-through conversions and gives full credit to the last Demand Gen touch, as social platforms do. Google says not to use them against Search or PMax (Platform Comparable columns).
• Lift studies answer the real question. Conversion Lift is available for Demand Gen, Search Lift measures brand searches it drives, and Brand Lift needs a Google account representative and measures YouTube only (Comparing lift types).

Without a lift study, we compare brand search volume and total store revenue for four weeks before and four weeks during the test, or run Demand Gen in some states and hold out others. If total sales do not move while Demand Gen reports conversions, it is taking credit for sales you would have made anyway.

What are the most common Demand Gen mistakes?

Most failed Demand Gen tests we audit come down to settings and expectations, not the campaign type.

1. Judging it like Search in week two. Last-click only, then paused before 50 conversions.
2. Leaving location on All locations. The ad group default reaches every country.
3. Landscape-only creative. No 9:16 video or image means weak or no Shorts delivery.
4. A Search-level target CPA on day one. Feed traffic is earlier in the decision, so a tight target or a budget below 10 times the target starves delivery.
5. Prospecting to people who already bought. Exclude purchasers, or prospecting quietly turns into remarketing.
6. Expecting Display-style controls. Demand Gen has no frequency caps, and content suitability and keyword exclusions sit at the account level.

What changed in Demand Gen in 2026?

In 2026, Google moved lookalikes to suggestion mode (March), finished the Video action upgrades (April), opened the Display migration tool (June) and shipped a Demand Gen Drop (September). The migration tool carries 42 days of history and cuts learning to about 1 to 2 days. The September 24 Demand Gen Drop added a Business Agent beta for YouTube video ads with product feeds, one-tap image ads on Shorts and Gmail, and affiliate location extensions on Maps for retail networks and dealerships. Google says advertisers who add Gmail see 40% more conversions from image ads at the same ROI (Google internal data, February 2026).

If you still run Display campaigns, migrate before the automatic move. Migrated ads go through review again, and lead form assets, shared budgets and campaign-level content exclusions must come off first.

Should you run Demand Gen yourself or get help?

Run it yourself if your tracking is clean, you have vertical video and a budget near 10 times your target CPA, and you can wait for 50 conversions. Get help when you need a feed fixed, a Display migration planned or a lift test designed. See how Logical Gecko manages Google Ads for online stores and home-service businesses, with Demand Gen judged on the sales it adds.