Just in time for the holidays, Google is introducing another new campaign type – Demand Gen.
Google has recently given its Discovery campaign type a new look and feel, and it’s being introduced as Demand Gen. These campaigns are devised to help advertisers find and convert consumers with immersive, relevant, and visual creatives that grab attention and spur action right at the moment. They are ideal for advertisers who want to serve visually appealing, multi-format ads on Google by combining the best of Google and YouTube’s visual surfaces powered by Google AI. Demand Gen campaigns can reach up to three billion users monthly.
These campaigns became available to all advertisers in October, as well as eligibility for Discovery campaign upgrades. You can contact your Google account team to upgrade your existing Discovery campaign immediately or wait until the end of this month when it will be upgraded automatically. Once upgraded, all historical data from Discovery campaigns will be carried over to your new Demand Gen campaigns.
The Key Benefits of Demand Gen Campaigns
1) Expanded impact with access to YouTube and Google’s most immersive visual touchpoints.
2) Tailored ad experiences that use audience-first creative that drives demand.
3) The ability to target lookalike audiences (the only Google campaign type to allow this).
4) Conversion-based bidding options powered by AI, which is a change from Discovery which was more brand awareness-focused.
Guidelines When Launching Demand Gen Campaigns
- Audience
- Try replicating your audience approach from similar Social or Video for Action campaigns
- Enable audience customization with the ability to target unique audience segments
- Budget
- Conversion-based bidding: set daily budget to 15x your expected CPA
- Value-based bidding: set daily budget to 20x (expected avg revenue / tROAS)
- Bidding
- Similar bid levels to your Social or Video for Action campaigns
- Set conversion attribution window to less than 28 days
- Maximize for Clicks, conversion-based bidding, or value-based bidding
- Creative
- Leverage existing social video and image creative assets
Single Image Ad Specs
- Aspect Ratio – recommended is at least three per aspect ratio, up to 20 total, max 5MB each
- Landscape 1.91:1 – Recommended 1200×628, min 600×314
- Square 1:1 – Recommended 1200×1200, min 300×300
- Portrait 4:5 (optional) – Recommended 960×1200, min 480×600
- Logo (required, up to five):
- 1:1 – Recommended 1200×1200, min 144×144, (150KB max file size)
- Will be cropped to a circle on GMail, losing just under 22% of the image
- Text
- Up to five Headlines
- Up to five Descriptions
- Final URL
- Business Name
- Call to Action
Carousel Ad Specs
- Ad Level
- Headline – up to 40 characters, to show no matter what card is showing
- Description – up to 90 characters, to show no matter what card is showing
- Final URL – auto-generated visible URL
- Business Name – 25 characters max
- Card Level
- Images – two to 10 (aspect ratio must be consistent across all cards)
- Landscape 1.91:1 – Recommended 1200×628, min 600×314
- Square 1:1 – Recommended 1200×1200, min 300×300
- Portrait 4:5 (optional) – Recommended 960×1200, min 480×600
- Headline – enter a headline specific for each card
- Business Name – 25 characters max
- Logo (1 max, required):
- 1:1 min 144×144 recommended 1200×1200 (150KB max file size)
- Will be cropped to a circle on GMail, losing just under 22% of the image
- Final URL – specific to the card
- Call to action
Video Ad Specs
- Video
- One to five advertiser-uploaded videos
- Hosted on YouTube
- Length: minimum of five seconds
- Shorts: 10-20 seconds recommended, max of 60 seconds
- Landscape: under three minutes recommended, no max length
- Square: under three minutes recommended, no max length
- Aspect Ratio
- Landscape – 16:9
- Square – 1:1
- Portrait – 4:5
- Vertical – 9:16
- Call to Action: maximum of 10 characters
- Headline – maximum of 40 characters (for skippable in-stream ads)
- Long Headline – maximum of 90 characters (used in in-feed video ads)
- Description – maximum of 90 characters
- Business Name – maximum of 25 characters, will default to YouTube Channel name
- Logo (1 max, required):
- 1:1 min 144×144 recommended 1200×1200 (150KB max file size)
- Will be cropped to a circle on GMail, losing just under 22% of the image
- Sitelinks (optional)
- Will show up to four sitelinks (skippable in-stream ad formats, only on mobile)
Dynamic Product Shopping Ad Specs
- Almost all detail comes from Google Merchant Center
- Card headline
- Card description
- Card image
- Card landing page
- Logo
- Business
- Name
- Short title
- Lifestyle image
- Intro Card – added in the UI
- Duration: Minimum four to six weeks to test; longer if you have a longer conversion delay
- Evaluation: Evaluate performance against your comparable social campaigns; if you’ve been running Discovery or Video Action campaigns, you can use them as another benchmark. Our Google rep has indicated that, most likely, Video Action campaigns will be sunset and replaced by Demand Gen campaigns.
Before you start your first Demand Gen campaign, you will need to decide what ad type you want to run. If you add a feed during campaign setup, you will not get the ad options for a single image, carousel image, or video. And once you’ve created the campaign with a feed, you can’t remove it. If you create a campaign without a feed, you’ll have the option to pick the type of ad you want to create.
So as you are crafting new strategies for your advertisers this upcoming holiday season, try working Demand Gen campaigns into your mix. Demand Gen aims to find and engage new audiences at scale. Larger advertiser studies have shown that Demand Gen has resulted in large CTR uplifts and lower CPAs and has driven incremental reach.
