Google Demand Gen, The Campaign That Reaches Buyers First
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Key Takeaways
- Demand Gen is a Google Ads campaign type that reaches an audience before they start searching for a product or service.
- It uses images, video and audience data to build interest across YouTube, Google Discover, Gmail and the Display Network.
- One campaign can build awareness, prompt interest and support conversion.
- It suits brands with strong visual or video assets that want reach beyond Search Ads.
- It works best alongside Search Ads and Performance Max, so the whole decision path is covered.
A consumer’s path to a purchase, the customer journey, no longer starts only with a Google search. People often meet a new product in a video, read a review inside content they already follow, or see an ad while scrolling a feed, and only later feel interested enough to go and look it up.
That behaviour means a brand needs a tool that reaches its audience before the need has formed clearly, and that is the role of Demand Gen, which prompts the interest that ends in a purchase.
Demand Gen is a campaign type in Google Ads, developed from Discovery Ads, built to help a brand create interest and prompt action through ads that lead with images and video. Its strength is that the brand does not have to wait for a consumer to search. It puts something worth noticing in front of people whose profile fits, while they are watching content, exploring something new, or using services across Google’s network.
Table of Contents
Demand Gen Google Ads, What It Is And How It Works
Demand Gen in Google Ads is a campaign that uses audience data together with Google’s AI to find the users most likely to be interested in a product or service, then chooses the right ad to show in each space.
For anyone still unsure what Google Ads is, think of it as Google’s online advertising system, which lets a brand reach its audience across Google’s services and networks. Demand Gen is one of the campaign types inside that system, and it differs from Search Ads, where the ad only has a chance to appear after a user types a query.
Say someone is watching YouTube Shorts about exercise. They have not searched for running shoes, but the system may show them a sports shoe ad if it judges them likely to be interested in that category.
So Google Demand Gen is the tool that puts a brand into the pre-search moment, with the aim of building awareness, raising interest, and prompting a purchase or an enquiry later.
Demand Gen also supports images, video and product data, so a brand can choose the presentation that fits its product and its audience’s behaviour, rather than working with text alone.
Where Do Demand Gen Ads Appear
One reason Demand Gen has drawn attention is that it places ads where consumers already spend time watching and discovering content.
YouTube
YouTube is Demand Gen’s most important surface, because people do not come to it only to look things up. They come to watch for entertainment, to learn something, and to find inspiration. Demand Gen ads can appear in several positions: the YouTube home page, search results, recommended videos, and YouTube Shorts, the vertical video people scroll through continuously. That gives a brand a way to build awareness through content that sits naturally with how people use the platform.
Google Discover
Google Discover is the content feed Google selects for each user by interest, with no search needed. It suits presenting a product, a service or a brand story to someone at the moment they are open to something new.
Gmail
Demand Gen appears in Gmail as well, particularly in the spaces given to promotions and marketing content, which adds another everyday channel for reaching a customer.
Google Display Network
Google has extended Demand Gen across the websites and apps of the Google Display Network. Image inventory across the Display Network was added in April 2025, and in May 2026 Google announced that standalone Display campaigns are being folded into Demand Gen, so the Display Network is now managed from inside it. That takes Demand Gen well beyond YouTube, Discover and Gmail.
Where an ad can actually appear still depends on the campaign settings, the ad format and Google’s updates at the time.
Image And Video Sizes To Prepare For Demand Gen
Demand Gen puts real weight on images and video, because the ads sit where people are watching content.
For images, prepare several aspect ratios so the system can fit each placement.
- Square, 1:1, recommended 1,200 x 1,200 pixels
- Landscape, 1.91:1, recommended 1,200 x 628 pixels
- Portrait, 4:5, recommended 960 x 1,200 pixels
- Vertical, 9:16, recommended 1,080 x 1,920 pixels, for surfaces such as YouTube Shorts
For video, have landscape, vertical and square versions so more placements are covered, such as 16:9 landscape and 9:16 vertical.
Having every size is not the point, though. The content has to hold attention from the first moment, because a user can scroll past an ad in an instant. Text, image and video should all state the product’s benefit plainly, without so much information that the viewer has to work to understand it.
Demand Gen Vs Performance Max
Demand Gen and Performance Max both use Google’s AI to lift performance, but their goals and their use differ.
| Point | Demand Gen | Performance Max | Video campaign |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strength | Creating interest and prompting demand | Results and conversion volume | Communicating through video |
| Ad formats | Images, video and product data | Images, video, text and product data | Video first |
| Audience selection | Weighted towards audiences and customer data | AI takes the lead in finding the groups most likely to convert | Set by campaign format |
| Where it shows | Surfaces suited to images and video | Across Google’s channels | YouTube and video surfaces |
| Suits | Building interest and reaching people before they search | Brands wanting more conversions or revenue | Building awareness through video |
Where a brand wants the system to find revenue opportunities across several channels, Performance Max tends to fit the goal better.
Demand Gen fits when a brand wants its images and video in front of more of its audience, particularly consumers who have not yet shown intent through a search.
What Is Demand Generation, And Is It The Same As Demand Gen
The names are close, but demand generation is a marketing concept with a wider meaning than Demand Gen in Google Ads.
Demand generation is the process of building interest and demand for a product, a service or a brand, from the point where a consumer has never heard of the brand through to the point where they start weighing a purchase. It can run through many channels: SEO content, social, video, influencer marketing, or advertising.
So Demand Gen is one tool that can sit inside a demand generation approach. It is not the same thing.
Which Businesses Should Use Demand Gen
Demand Gen is the ad format for a brand that wants to reach customers before a search happens, particularly a product or a service that draws attention through images or video. The clearest example is e-commerce, which can use product images, video and Google Merchant Center data to put products in front of people likely to be interested.
Service brands can use Demand Gen too: clinics, schools, property, hotels, or any service that needs explaining before a decision, using video to show the strengths, how it works, the results, or the experience a customer will have.
It also suits a brand that already holds customer data, because that data helps Google understand what the audience looks like.
The reverse case: a brand with a very tight budget that wants customers ready to buy now may be better served by putting Search Ads first, because those reach people who have already shown intent through a query.
How To Build A Demand Gen Campaign In Google Ads
Start by setting the commercial goal clearly and understanding what the audience is interested in right now. A marketer might check the trend with Google Trends to see where interest is heading and use that to shape the ad headline, image or video to match the market. Then the basic steps run as follows.
- Open Google Ads and choose to create a new campaign
- Choose the goal: revenue, leads, or site visits
- Choose Demand Gen as the campaign type
- Set the conversion the system should measure against
- Choose the locations, languages and devices to reach
- Set the audience, including existing customer data where you have it
- Choose the bidding model and the budget
- Add images, video, logo, headlines and descriptions
- Connect Google Merchant Center if you are advertising products
- Check the ad preview in each placement before it goes live
Once the campaign is running, watch the quality of the users Demand Gen brings in: whether they fill in a form, buy, or come back later to search for the brand.
Continuous testing of images, video, copy and audiences is a large part of what the campaign delivers.
Use Demand Gen Across Every Stage Of The Decision
Demand Gen does its main work while a consumer is not yet searching for a product or service directly, which gives a brand the chance to build interest before the customer reaches the comparison and decision stage. Demand Gen on its own may not be enough for every brand, though. Set alongside Search Ads, Performance Max and the other marketing channels, it lets a brand reach customers from first interest through to the point of decision.
Primal provides digital marketing end to end, planning on data and joining several channels together so ad spend tracks each brand’s goals. More than 150 digital marketing specialists look after campaigns and see them through.
For a Google Ads service that structures the campaign, selects the audience and manages the budget systematically, use the form on the site to speak with Primal’s planning team. We design an approach that fits the brand and set the role Demand Gen plays alongside the other channels so the whole works efficiently.
Frequently Asked Questions About Demand Gen (FAQs)
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is the minimum budget for Demand Gen? | Google sets no fixed minimum for Demand Gen, but the budget has to be enough for the system to gather data and learn the audience’s behaviour properly. The right figure depends on the campaign goal, the audience and the value of a conversion in each brand’s case. |
| Can Demand Gen be used with existing customers? | Yes. A brand can use existing customer data to shape the audience, such as lists of past buyers, subscribers, or people who have interacted with the brand, so the communication lands more precisely. Customer data has to be handled in line with privacy requirements and Google’s policies. |
| Does Demand Gen suit direct revenue? | It can drive revenue or collect leads, though performance depends on several factors: the quality of the images and video, the precision of the audience, the landing page and the brand’s offer. It should not be treated as an awareness-only campaign. |
| Does every Demand Gen campaign need video? | No. Demand Gen supports both images and video. Having video in several formats does raise the chance of the ad fitting each placement, particularly YouTube and YouTube Shorts, so prepare several kinds of assets where the resources allow. |
| How long should Demand Gen run before judging whether it works? | Do not judge on the first few days of data, because the system needs time to gather information and adjust delivery. Look at the number of conversions, the trend in cost per result, the quality of the users coming in, and the overall commercial result before changing the budget or making a major change of approach. |
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