Process Flow
Animated overview of the full workflow
TL;DR
Demand Gen campaigns (formerly Discovery Ads) reach users across YouTube, Gmail, and Google Discover feeds. Create a campaign with Sales, Leads, or Traffic objective, select Demand Gen as the campaign type, add audience targeting (similar to Meta's interest and custom audience targeting), upload image and video creative in multiple formats, and set a budget with Maximise Conversions or Target CPA bidding.
Step-by-Step Guide
Follow these 5 steps to complete this guide
- 1
What Are Demand Gen Campaigns?
Demand Gen campaigns serve visually rich ads across Google's entertainment and discovery surfaces: YouTube (Home feed, Watch Next, Shorts, In-stream), Gmail (Promotions and Social tabs), and Discover (Google's personalised content feed). They are Google's answer to Meta's feed-based advertising — visual, interest-driven, and designed for mid-funnel engagement.
- 2
Campaign Setup
Create a new campaign. Choose Sales, Leads, or Website Traffic as the objective. Select 'Demand Gen' as the campaign type. Configure audience targeting, creative assets, and bidding.
- 3
Audience Targeting
Demand Gen supports in-market audiences, custom segments (based on search terms, URLs, or apps), remarketing lists, customer match, and lookalike segments (similar to Meta's lookalike audiences). Lookalike segments expand from your seed audience to find similar users.
- 4
Creative Formats
Single image ads, carousel ads (up to 10 cards), video ads, and product feeds (for e-commerce). Upload assets in multiple aspect ratios: landscape (1.91:1), square (1:1), and portrait (4:5). Video should be in landscape, square, and vertical formats.
- 5
Bidding and Budget
Use Maximise Conversions for volume or Target CPA for efficiency. Budget recommendation: at least 15x your target CPA as a daily budget for the algorithm to learn effectively.
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