Demand Gen campaigns were introduced to solve a specific problem: there was no Google-native equivalent of paid social's ability to reach people who weren't yet searching but were receptive to discovery. Demand Gen fills that gap by running visual, immersive ads across YouTube, Google Display Network, Discover, and Gmail - reaching people in consumption mode rather than search mode.
The results data is compelling. Google's internal analysis shows that advertisers adopting at least three of the four Demand Gen best practices see an average of over 40% more conversions. Campaigns that include TV screens via Shoppable CTV drive an average of 7% additional conversions at the same ROI.
The four best practices that drive performance
First: audience configuration. Demand Gen performs best when optimised targeting is enabled, allowing Google AI to find your next best customer beyond your manually defined audiences. Lookalike audiences and new customer acquisition goals layer on top to find users with attributes similar to your highest-value existing customers.
Second: bidding and budget. Target CPA or Target ROAS bidding, combined with budgets set high enough to generate the data volume the algorithm needs, produces far better results than daily budgets that restrict the campaign before it can optimise.
Third: creative. Demand Gen serves across multiple formats and placements. Creative assets need to be varied in format, aspect ratio, and messaging to perform across all of them. Creator partnerships drive an average 30% increase in conversion lift on YouTube Shorts when authentic creator assets are incorporated.
Fourth: data quality. Sitewide tagging, offline conversion imports, and proper first-party data connections dramatically improve the algorithm's ability to optimise toward commercially worthwhile outcomes rather than proxy metrics.
Where Demand Gen fits in the channel mix
Demand Gen isn't a replacement for Search campaigns. It's a complement - capturing users earlier in their journey who will later convert via Search or direct. The attribution story for Demand Gen requires longer measurement windows and multi-touch thinking. Evaluating it on last-click performance will consistently undervalue it.