What are Google Demand Gen Campaigns?
The fundamental idea: Multi-platform, creative focused campaigns
Demand generation campaigns have been rolled out by Google to replace Discovery campaigns.
Demand Generation campaigns leverage AI to allow advertisers to reach highly relevant audiences across multiple platforms, such as YouTube, Gmail and Discover within a single campaign.
The new campaign format has a lot of similarities to the Discovery campaign format it replaces, with some newly added features which we’ll dive into below.
Maximising owned data & AI
One of Google’s superpowers as an advertising platform has always been its owned data-set - The unfathomably deep and diverse set of 1’s and 0’s they collect about users across their many, many products.
This dataset includes how users browse the web via Chrome, interests & purchasing habits via emails in Gmail, day-to-day lives via their android mobile devices and of course, their search behaviour via Google search.
Multi-platform campaigns aim to leverage this strength, with demand generation campaigns taking advantage of advances in AI to target and engage highly profiled users as they interact across multiple different platforms - A very powerful tool in an age of ever-more complex buyer behaviours.
New addition: Expanded ad formats
In a welcome addition, Demand Gen campaigns will be introducing the ability to display advertisements on both YouTube shorts, and YouTube in-stream placements.
This extra real-estate will certainly come in handy for engaging with audiences and encouraging them through the consideration phases of purchasing journeys.
Especially as shorts & in-stream ads are typically the YouTube placements with the highest engagement rates.
New Re-addition: Lookalike audiences
You could be forgiven for getting a strange sense of dejavu from this addition.
In August 2023 Google ended support for the use of ‘Similar Audiences’ across all campaigns.
However, in positive news, it would appear that similar audiences’ suspiciously similar-looking sibling, ‘lookalike’ segments has taken its place.
Only available for demand-gen campaigns (for now), lookalike segments allow you to input your own 1st party data (emails, website visitors etc) and ask Google to target others who show similar traits.
Historically similar audiences have been a very powerful tool, so the addition of this functionality has certainly caught our attention.
Maximise clicks
Google has expanded upon the Discovery campaign's capability to optimise towards conversions, or conversion value by adding the option to set a maximise clicks campaign objective.
Although a traffic based bidding strategy might not be the first choice for many performance focused marketers, having more tools at your disposal is always better.
In this case, see this as a positive addition. Whilst there’s no doubt Demand Gen campaigns are capable of driving on-site action - these types of campaigns often work best when tasked with upper & mid funnel marketing objectives.
Setting a more simplified traffic objective will help to frame these campaigns in a slightly more realistic light for many advertisers.
Brand & Search lift reports
In order to help advertisers assess the success of their new Demand Gen campaigns, Google has added two new reports; Brand lift & Search lift.
These reports are limited to use on YouTube + other image & video placements and aim to help you assess the broader impact of your campaign efforts in building your brand.
This impact is measured by the reports using two key elements, firstly how likely those exposed to your ads are to remember you (brand lift), and secondly by how make additional searches users exposed to your ads made for your brand (search lift)*.
*At the time of writing, it isn’t 100% clear how these search uplifts will be assessed and reported on.
Improved user interface
Any updates that make the campaign optimisation process more streamlined are fine by us.
And for the launch of Demand Gen campaigns, Google has done just that.
Their new refined campaign creation process aims to make it easier to preview your images and videos across a variety of different placement scenarios ahead of your campaign launch.
Historically we have found the ad-preview tool on Discovery campaigns to be a bit lacking at times, with ads appearing ‘in the wild’ in various formats not shown in the preview (which could mean potentially missing key messages) so we are grateful for the improvement.
When can you access Demand Gen Campaigns?
August to September 2023 - Sign up for the early access Beta here
October to January 2024 - Upgrades begin. Some accounts will be upgraded automatically, others will need to contact the account team.
January to March 2023 - All remaining accounts will be upgraded automatically to Demand Gen campaigns. Google will carry over historical data from legacy Discovery campaigns.
Should you use Demand Gen Campaigns?
If you’re already using display / discovery / youtube campaigns then yes, demand gen seems like a worth-while upgrade! (Don’t forget you can apply for early access here). The addition of in-stream and shorts placements should add some powerful new reach to these campaigns, and similar / lookalike audiences could make these campaigns very effective for those in the right markets.
However, if your campaign stack currently focuses mostly on the lower funnel, and consists entirely of search based campaigns (shopping, text ads) focused on high-intent keywords then we would recommend you make a few key considerations before expanding into a demand gen campaign;
Current search headroom
Are you budget limited on your current paid search campaigns? If so, then moving up the funnel might not be your best next step - There is likely room for improvement in your existing activity. Get in touch if you would like us to review your campaigns!
Your market
Is your market well ‘understood’ by Google - Similar audiences can work very well, if there is a clear parallel between your customer list and other potential customers that Google understands.
Your creative assets
Do you have some nice videos & image creative available? Google will work its magic to piece together ads using whatever assets you provide, but where possible use nicely designed images & videos in the proper size formats to get the best results.