Demand Gen Campaigns: When to Run Them, and When Not To

Every surface a Demand Gen campaign can reach, and the two things to fix before it does.

First, a naming problem. "Demand generation" is also a B2B marketing strategy, and we cover that in our demand generation guide. This post is about the Google Ads campaign type called Demand Gen. Different thing, same two words.

Demand Gen sits alongside Search, Shopping and Performance Max in our Google Ads guide. It is the one campaign type Google built for advertisers who already buy on Instagram and Facebook, and it changes more often than any other. Everything below was checked against Google Ads Help in September 2026.

We will use one running example: a Mumbai edtech brand selling a ₹25,000 online data-analytics course, with leads going to a counselling team before anyone pays.

What Demand Gen campaigns are in 2026

Google describes Demand Gen as campaigns that "capture engagement and action across YouTube (including Shorts), Discover, Gmail, Maps, and the Google Display Network" (Google Ads Help, About Demand Gen campaigns). The inventory list has grown three times in two years, so check dates on anything you read about it.

• Discovery ads became Demand Gen. Google announced Demand Gen in May 2023. Discovery campaigns could migrate from October 2023, and Google auto-upgraded the rest between January and March 2024 (Search Engine Land). If a guide still says "Discovery ads", it is at least two years old.
• Video action campaigns followed. Google stopped new ones in April 2025 and finished the automatic upgrades to Demand Gen in April 2026 (Google Ads Help).
• Display was added in 2025. Google Video Partners was renamed Google Display Network inside Demand Gen in March 2025, and image ads started serving on the Display Network from April 2025 (Google Ads Help).
• Standard Display campaigns are now moving in. A migration tool began a phased rollout in June 2026. New Display campaigns will only be created inside Demand Gen, and remaining eligible campaigns will be migrated automatically (Google Ads Help).

The practical meaning: a Demand Gen campaign left on default settings now buys Display inventory too. That is the single biggest change for anyone who set these up in 2024 and has not looked since.

What you control, and what Google now decides

Demand Gen gives you more steering than Performance Max. Less than it gave you a year ago, though.

Channel controls: set per ad group

You can pick channels at ad group level. The default, "All Google channels", expands automatically to new channels as Google adds them; "Let me choose" lets you tick YouTube (in-stream, in-feed, Shorts), Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Display Network individually (Google Ads Help, Channel controls). Google recommends the automatic option for most advertisers. Maps only serves if a location extension is on the account.

Our view: start with "Let me choose" on at least one ad group. You cannot judge a channel you cannot isolate, and ad group reporting is the cleanest way to see where the money went.

Lookalike segments: now a signal by default

Lookalikes exist only in Demand Gen among Google campaign types. You pick a seed (customer list, site visitors, YouTube viewers) and a reach level: Narrow is about 2.5% of users in your location, Balanced about 5%, Broad about 10% (Google Ads Help). The sum of your seed lists must stay above 100 active matched people or the segment deactivates.

The change that matters: from March 2026, lookalikes default to "suggestion mode". Google says your seed list "will act as a signal" and the system "may reach highly qualified customers outside of similarity thresholds" (Google Ads Help). You can keep the old hard targeting by opting out through Google's form. If you run Meta, this will feel familiar: it is how lookalike audiences drifted there too.

Bidding: the full menu

Google lists Maximize Clicks, Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, Target ROAS, Target CPC and value-based bidding (Demand Gen FAQ). Its performance guide adds three numbers to pin above your desk: a budget of at least 10 times your target CPA, at least 50 conversions before the campaign has a foundation, and 30 to 50 conversions after any change before you judge it (Demand Gen performance guide). The same guide warns against click-based bidding if you care about conversion efficiency. Our Google Ads bidding strategy guide covers how each strategy behaves.

Demand Gen vs Performance Max vs Meta Advantage+

The short version: PMax is for capturing intent that already exists, including search. Demand Gen and Meta are for creating it. Between those two, the deciding factors are where your buyers watch video and which platform holds your conversion data.

Sources: Demand Gen, Performance Max and Platform Comparable conversions on Google Ads Help; Meta's Blueprint training on Advantage+ sales, app and leads campaigns. The Meta column is our summary from running the platform. Checked 21 September 2026.

Two measurement details change how you read the numbers. The Platform Comparable column counts view-through conversions, gives full credit to the last Demand Gen touch, populates only for Demand Gen, and has no data from before it launched in your account (Google Ads Help). It is built to sit next to Meta reporting. It does not feed bidding. So a Demand Gen campaign can look like Meta on that column and look weak in your primary conversions column, and both can be true.

If you already run PMax, our Performance Max guide covers its setup. The overlap question is simple in our experience: PMax will take the cheaper search and remarketing conversions if both campaigns can reach the same user. Judge Demand Gen on new customers, not on blended CPA.

When Demand Gen is the wrong buy

Demand Gen is an easy campaign to spend money in. Shorts inventory is enormous, and Google puts daily Shorts views above 50 billion (Google Ads Help). Cheap impressions follow. Customers do not always follow them.

Skip it, or wait, if any of these describe your account:

• You cannot reach 50 conversions a month on any action you trust. The system has nothing to learn from, and you end up on Maximize Clicks, which Google itself says is the wrong tool for conversion efficiency.
• You have no vertical video. Shorts and in-feed placements are vertical, and in our experience a landscape-only or static-only campaign struggles there against creator content.
• Your search campaigns are not yet limited by budget. Cheaper intent is still on the table.
• Your conversion is a form fill with no quality check. Demand Gen audiences are colder than search, and cold audiences fill forms with wrong numbers.

For the Mumbai edtech brand, the last point is the trap. A ₹25,000 course has maybe a handful of enrolments a week. Optimising on raw leads will find people who tap a form on Discover and never pick up the counsellor's call.

How to launch a first Demand Gen campaign

This is the order we would follow for the edtech brand. Each step prevents a specific way the campaign wastes its first month.

1. Fix conversion tracking before anything else. Make "counselling call completed" (or "qualified lead", marked in your CRM) the primary conversion, and import enrolments as offline conversions with the ₹25,000 value. Set raw form fills as secondary. Google's guide says to optimise for deep actions and keep shallow ones non-biddable.
2. Build seed lists that describe buyers, not browsers. Upload past enrolled students as a Customer Match list. Add a website segment of people who reached the fee or syllabus page. Keep the combined seed above 100 matched people, and create the lookalike 2 to 3 days before launch, as Google advises.
3. Make creative for each placement. At minimum: two 9:16 videos of 20 to 40 seconds (a past student and a trainer walking through one real project), one 16:9 cut for in-stream, 1.91:1, 4:5 and 1:1 images, and one carousel showing the module list. Put the fee and batch start date in the copy so tyre-kickers filter themselves out.
4. Split ad groups by channel. One ad group on YouTube only (in-stream, in-feed, Shorts) with video; one on Discover and Gmail with images and carousels. Leave the Display Network off for the first month. You can add it once you have a baseline to compare against.
5. Pick a bid strategy you can feed. Start on Maximize Conversions on the qualified-lead action. Illustrative arithmetic only: if you are aiming for a ₹900 cost per qualified lead, Google's 10x rule puts the daily budget at about ₹9,000. Move to Target CPA only after 50 conversions.
6. Respect the learning period. No bid, budget or audience edits in the first week. If you must change something, Google suggests steps of 5 to 10% a week and budget increases of no more than 15% at a time.
7. Day 7 check: plumbing, not performance. Are conversions recording in both the primary and Platform Comparable columns? Which ad group is taking the spend? Is the Shorts ad group getting cheap views with zero qualified leads? Pause creative that has clearly failed; leave everything else alone.
8. Day 21 check: quality, then efficiency. Pull the CRM. How many Demand Gen leads were counselled, and how many enrolled? Compare cost per qualified lead by ad group. If you have passed 30 to 50 conversions since the last change, now you can reallocate budget, test a Broad lookalike, or try the Display Network as a separate ad group.

Most failed Demand Gen accounts we audit skipped step one and optimised on a form submit. If you would rather have someone set this up with you, our Google Ads management team builds the tracking first and the campaign second.

Creative is most of the work

On Search, the query does the targeting. On Demand Gen, the creative does. The ad has to stop a thumb on Shorts, then make sense as a still image in Gmail.

For the edtech brand, what tends to work in our experience is proof from someone who looks like the buyer: a Thane commerce graduate showing the dashboard she built in week six beats a polished brand film. Vertical, captioned, the product visible in the first three seconds. Google's own format list covers vertical, square and landscape video plus carousels of 2 to 10 cards (Google Ads Help). Our YouTube ads guide goes deeper on video structure.

Plan for refreshes. The same two videos running for three months will tire, and Demand Gen has no fix for a tired video except a new one.

What to do next

If your search campaigns are capped by budget, your tracking reports qualified leads rather than raw form fills, and you have vertical video, test Demand Gen against a Meta prospecting campaign of similar budget for a month. Compare cost per qualified lead from the CRM, not from either platform's dashboard.

If any of those three is missing, fix that first. Demand Gen will still spend your budget. It just will not tell you much.