YouTube Demand Gen Campaigns That Create Demand Across Every Google Surface.
Demand Gen campaigns run across YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Discover and Gmail from a single campaign. They reach audiences that are not yet searching for your product and introduce your brand at the moment they are most receptive to discovery. For ecommerce and service brands, Demand Gen replaces Discovery campaigns with significantly expanded inventory and stronger creative performance signals.
What Demand Gen Campaigns Do Differently From Other Google Formats.
Demand Gen campaigns replaced Google Discovery campaigns in 2024 and expanded the available inventory to include YouTube in-stream, YouTube Shorts, YouTube feed, Discover feed and Gmail placements. This gives a single campaign access to a significantly larger share of Google inventory than Discovery campaigns provided. More importantly, Demand Gen introduces video creative support alongside image creative, enabling richer storytelling formats in placements previously limited to static images.
Lookalike audiences: the most powerful targeting feature in Demand Gen
Demand Gen is the only Google Ads campaign type that supports lookalike audiences. You upload a seed list, typically your customer email list or a high-value customer segment, and Google builds a lookalike audience matching the professional and behavioural characteristics of that seed. This produces prospecting audiences with significantly higher baseline purchase intent than interest-based targeting alone. For ecommerce brands, a lookalike from your top 10 percent of customers by lifetime value consistently produces stronger ROAS than generic in-market targeting for the same product category.
YouTube Shorts: the highest-reach format in Demand Gen
YouTube Shorts placements within Demand Gen campaigns reach audiences in a vertical video, full-screen context with very high daily active usage. Shorts ads must be 60 seconds or less in vertical 9:16 format. Creative that looks like native Shorts content rather than a produced advertisement consistently produces higher engagement rates. The hook must work in the first 2 seconds in the Shorts context, which is even more compressed than the 5-second window in standard in-stream formats.
Demand Gen and Shopping: product-linked video campaigns
Demand Gen campaigns can be linked to a Google Merchant Center product feed, enabling product cards to appear alongside your video and image ads. This is particularly powerful for ecommerce brands because it connects the awareness impact of video with the direct purchase intent of product listing clicks in a single campaign. Viewers who see a product demonstrated in a video and can click directly to the product page convert at significantly higher rates than those who must navigate from a brand awareness click to a product page.
What We Cover and How We Approach It.
Demand Gen Campaign Setup
We build Demand Gen campaigns with the correct asset mix, lookalike audience configuration and product feed integration for ecommerce brands, structured to reach new audiences at scale across all four Google surfaces.
Lookalike Audience Configuration
We build lookalike audiences from your customer match data, optimise the seed list quality for the most accurate lookalike match and test multiple lookalike expansion levels to find the right balance between audience quality and reach.
Multi-Format Creative Strategy
We develop creative strategy covering YouTube in-stream video, YouTube Shorts video, static image and HTML5 formats, each adapted for the specific placement context and audience mindset on that surface.
Shopping Feed Integration
We link your Google Merchant Center product feed to Demand Gen campaigns, enabling product card display alongside video and image creative to connect brand awareness with direct product discovery.
YouTube Shorts Creative Production
We brief and produce YouTube Shorts-format video creative in 9:16 aspect ratio with a 2-second hook and clear product demonstration, built specifically for the native Shorts viewing experience.
Demand Gen Performance Attribution
We set up full-funnel attribution covering view-through conversions, engaged-view conversions and click-through conversions to understand the complete impact of Demand Gen campaigns beyond last-click attribution.
Tips That Improve Results Faster.
Use Your Best Customer Cohort as the Lookalike Seed
The quality of your lookalike audience depends entirely on the quality of your seed list. Upload your top-value customers by LTV or your highest-retention customer cohort rather than your full customer list. A smaller, higher-quality seed consistently produces better lookalike audience performance.
Create Shorts-Specific Creative, Not Repurposed Landscape Video
Shorts placements require vertical 9:16 video that looks native to the Shorts feed. Cropped landscape video performs poorly in Shorts context. If you want Shorts placement performance, invest in dedicated vertical creative with a 2-second hook and minimal text overlay.
Run Demand Gen Alongside Performance Max for Incremental Reach
Demand Gen and Performance Max have overlapping but distinct inventory. Running both together with different audience targeting produces incremental reach that neither campaign achieves alone. Use Demand Gen for prospecting new audiences and Performance Max for converting intent signals across the full Google network.
Test Image Ads Alongside Video in the Same Campaign
Demand Gen supports both video and image creative. Image ads serve on Discover and Gmail where video placement is less dominant. Including strong image creative alongside video ensures your campaign captures available inventory across all four surfaces rather than leaving non-video placements under-utilised.
Build Engaged Viewer Audiences for Remarketing
Google provides engaged-view conversion tracking and the ability to build remarketing audiences from Demand Gen viewers who watched significant portions of your video. These audiences consistently outperform cold prospecting in subsequent conversion campaigns.
Set a Conservative Target ROAS Initially
Demand Gen campaigns using Target ROAS bidding need conversion history to optimise correctly. Start with a conservative ROAS target or Maximise Conversions bidding for the first 4 to 6 weeks to allow the algorithm to accumulate data before tightening the ROAS target.
Exclude Your Existing Customers From Prospecting Campaigns
Add your customer list as an excluded audience in prospecting Demand Gen campaigns to avoid spending discovery budget on people who have already purchased. Use a separate Demand Gen campaign targeting existing customers for upsell and cross-sell campaigns with different creative.
Monitor Impression Share on YouTube Shorts Separately
Demand Gen campaigns report performance by placement type. Check whether your Shorts creative is serving at the share you expect. If Shorts delivery is low, this often indicates that your vertical video creative quality score is limiting delivery on that surface.
The Tools Behind Every Engagement.
Google Ads
The central interface for Demand Gen campaign creation, lookalike audience setup, product feed linking, bidding configuration and performance reporting.
Google Merchant Center
Links your product catalogue to Demand Gen campaigns enabling product card display alongside video and image ads. Feed health directly affects the quality and breadth of product listings served in Demand Gen placements.
Google Analytics 4
Tracks post-click and view-through behaviour from Demand Gen campaigns. The Advertising section in GA4 provides channel-level attribution including Demand Gen performance within the full customer acquisition path.
Video Production Tools
Demand Gen requires both 16:9 landscape video for YouTube in-stream and 9:16 vertical video for YouTube Shorts. Having both formats from the start maximises your campaign reach across all available placements.
Google Ads Audience Manager
Used to build, manage and monitor lookalike audiences from customer match seed lists and to create engaged viewer remarketing audiences from Demand Gen video interaction data.
Performance Max
Run alongside Demand Gen to maximise total Google inventory coverage. Performance Max handles intent-based signals across Search, Shopping and Display while Demand Gen handles awareness and consideration through video and discovery placements.
Looker Studio
Build Demand Gen performance dashboards connecting Google Ads campaign data with GA4 ecommerce or lead data to track the full-funnel impact of Demand Gen spend including view-through and engaged-view conversions.
Google Tag Manager
Deploy conversion tracking events for Demand Gen including purchase, lead form and engagement milestones that feed the data signals Demand Gen campaigns use for audience optimisation.
How We Deliver Consistent Results.
Audience and Seed List Preparation
We prepare and validate your customer match seed lists, segment them by value cohort and configure lookalike audience expansion settings before building any campaigns.
Creative Audit and Multi-Format Build
We audit your existing video and image assets for Demand Gen compatibility, identify gaps in format coverage and brief or produce any missing creative including Shorts-format vertical video.
Campaign Architecture and Feed Linking
We structure Demand Gen campaigns by audience type and objective, link your Merchant Center product feed for ecommerce placements and configure the correct bidding strategy for your current conversion history volume.
Launch and Learning Phase Management
We launch campaigns and monitor delivery, CPM, CTR and early conversion signals during the first 4 to 6 weeks without making significant changes that would reset algorithm learning.
Audience Expansion and Creative Testing
After the learning phase, we test lookalike expansion levels, add new creative variants for Shorts and image placements and build engaged viewer remarketing audiences from campaign interaction data.
Monthly Full-Funnel Reporting
Monthly reports cover CPM, CTR, view-through conversions, engaged-view conversions, ROAS by placement type and the downstream pipeline contribution of Demand Gen campaigns connected to your CRM or ecommerce data.
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Common Questions Answered.
Build Demand at Scale With YouTube Demand Gen Campaigns.
We set up and manage Demand Gen campaigns with lookalike audiences, multi-format creative and product feed integration that reaches new audiences across YouTube, Shorts, Discover and Gmail.