Demand GenGoogle's answer to the social feed

What Demand Gen is for#

Most of Google's advertising captures demand: someone searches, and you answer. Demand Gen is built for the opposite job. It places ads in environments where people are browsing, watching or reading rather than asking, and aims to make them want something they were not yet looking for.

In that sense it competes less with Google Search and more with social platforms. It uses visual, scroll-stopping creative and audience-based targeting, and it is judged, at least partly, on whether it creates interest that later turns into searches, visits and sales. Check Google's current documentation for its exact placements and options, which have expanded since launch.

Where the ads appear#

Demand Gen serves across Google's most visual surfaces: YouTube in-stream, in-feed and Shorts placements; the Discover feed on mobile; Gmail's promotions and social tabs; and, depending on current settings, partner video inventory. Formats include single image, carousel and video ads, and product feeds can be attached for retailers.

The practical difference is control. Demand Gen lets you choose audiences, see how specific creative performs and control placement more directly. Performance Max hands those decisions to Google. If your aim is to test creative concepts on YouTube and Discover among defined audiences, Demand Gen gives you clearer answers. See our Performance Max guide for the other side.

Audiences: the core of Demand Gen#

Because people in these placements are not searching, audiences do the targeting work that keywords do in Search. Google offers lookalike-style audiences based on your own customer lists, custom audiences built from search terms and interests, in-market and affinity audiences, and remarketing lists. Names change, so confirm the current set.

• Start from your customers. Lookalike segments seeded from good customer lists are usually the strongest prospecting audiences.
• Use search intent off-search. Custom segments built from relevant search terms reach people who recently searched those topics, wherever they are now browsing.
• Separate prospecting from remarketing. Different messages, different expectations, different frequency.
• Decide on audience expansion deliberately. Optional expansion can find more people; test it rather than accepting it by default.

Creative that works in a feed#

Demand Gen creative competes with videos people chose to watch and articles they chose to read. It has to earn attention in the same way social ads do. The rules of good Meta creative largely apply: a strong visual hook, a clear subject, a reason to care and a simple next step.

• Supply every aspect ratio. Vertical for Shorts, square and landscape for feeds and Gmail.
• Lead with the subject. On Discover and Gmail, the image and headline do almost all the work.
• Use real product and people imagery. Generic stock looks like advertising and is scrolled past.
• Make video for the first seconds. Particularly on Shorts and in-stream, where skipping is immediate.

Bidding and conversion goals#

Demand Gen supports conversion-based and click-based bidding; check current options. Conversion bidding needs data, and because Demand Gen reaches people earlier in their journey, direct conversions are fewer and slower than in Search. Some advertisers optimise for a meaningful upper-funnel action, such as add-to-cart or a key page visit, while volume builds, then move to deeper goals.

Be careful when comparing Demand Gen with Search on cost per conversion. Search harvests people who already want something; Demand Gen creates interest. Judging them on the same last-click measure will always make Demand Gen look expensive and will lead you to underinvest in the activity that fills the top of your funnel.

Measuring what Demand Gen creates#

Google offers lift measurement for some campaign types, including brand and search lift studies, subject to eligibility; check current requirements. Where these are not available, geographic holdout tests can show whether regions exposed to Demand Gen generate more searches and sales than comparable regions that were not. Our guide to incrementality testing explains the approach.

Common mistakes#

• Recycling search ad thinking. Text-led, offer-heavy creative written for people who already want the product rarely stops someone browsing Discover or Shorts.
• Optimising for the wrong event. Clicks are cheap in feed placements, and click-optimised campaigns can attract curious browsers rather than future customers.
• Starving the campaign. Very small budgets spread over many audiences produce too little data for bidding to learn.
• Judging too early. Demand creation takes time to show up in searches and sales; a fortnight is rarely long enough.
• Ignoring frequency. Small remarketing audiences can see the same ad many times in a short period.

Most of these come from treating Demand Gen as a cheaper route to the same conversions that Search delivers. It is a different job. Give it a different brief, a different creative standard and a different scorecard, and it is far more likely to earn its budget.

It also helps to plan the hand-off between channels. People who first meet a brand on Discover or Shorts often come back through search days or weeks later. Make sure the brand and category Search campaigns are ready to catch them, with ads and pages that echo what they saw, so the interest Demand Gen creates is not lost to a competitor at the moment of search.

Setting up a first campaign#

When to use Demand Gen#

For many advertisers, Demand Gen fills the gap between YouTube ads as a pure brand channel and Performance Max as a pure conversion engine: a place to build interest among defined audiences, with creative you can see and learn from. Fit it into the wider plan using our media planning framework.

Published by Fabulous.Media, a network of specialist marketing agencies. Updated 9 October 2026. Platform features change often; check current official documentation before acting on platform-specific detail.