Demand Gen campaigns are a type of Google Ads campaign built specifically for visual, immersive formats: YouTube, Discover and Gmail, mainly. Unlike a Search campaign, which responds to something the user is already actively searching for, Demand Gen is designed to reach people who don't yet know they need your product, generating interest where no explicit purchase intent existed before.
How it differs from traditional Display
Google positions Demand Gen as an evolution of the old Display and Discovery campaigns, with improved targeting of audiences similar to your current customers, vertical formats built for mobile consumption (closer to what you see on TikTok or Instagram Stories) and more advanced machine-learning optimisation than classic Display campaigns.
When it makes sense over other formats
When the goal is awareness or early brand consideration, not immediate capture of an active search. When the product or service needs to be "discovered" because the target audience doesn't yet know that kind of solution exists. And as a complement to existing Search campaigns, feeding the top of the funnel while Search and Shopping capture demand that's already generated and conscious.
The kind of creative it demands
Being a visual, immersive format, creative (video, image, copy) carries far more weight than in a Search campaign, where the ad text competes on equal visual footing with the rest of the results. Here, a mediocre video or image simply won't grab attention in a feed built for fast scrolling, so investment in quality creative matters more than in almost any other Google Ads format.
How to measure success without falling into the last-click trap
Judging Demand Gen purely by conversions directly attributed to that ad tends to undervalue its real contribution, because its main role in the funnel is often generating the first contact that converts weeks later through a direct brand search or an organic visit. Assisted-conversion reports and data-driven attribution models, rather than last-click, give a much fairer picture of its performance.
Frequently asked questions
Does Demand Gen replace Search campaigns?
No, they play different roles in the funnel: Search captures existing, explicit demand, while Demand Gen generates new demand. Combining both, rather than choosing just one, is the usual and recommended approach.
What minimum budget does a Demand Gen campaign need to work?
There's no fixed figure, but since it depends on machine learning it needs a reasonable data volume to optimise well, so very low budgets take longer to show stable results than Search campaigns with already-defined intent.
Do I need video to launch a Demand Gen campaign?
It's not mandatory (image formats are supported too), but video tends to perform better in YouTube placements, which is where Demand Gen has the most potential reach within Google's ecosystem.