By Pep Canals, on 22 November 2023
Google Ads is introducing a new campaign format in response to evolving consumer behaviors and video content trends. These advertising campaigns are meant to drive demand. In this article, we'll go into the details of these new campaigns and guide you on how to set them up in your account.
What Are Demand Gen Campaigns?
Demand Gen campaigns are Google's new approach to boosting mid-funnel goals.
With Demand Gen, brands can develop highly creative, visual, and effective campaigns for their customers and leads, with the objective of stimulating demand. These new campaigns are basically focused on entertainment platforms: YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Discover, and Gmail.
This way, brands to engage with and influence over 3 billion monthly users who use Google's robust suite of tools, all while showcasing high-performing video and image ads. Importantly, users won't need to leave the platform they're currently using. As a result, companies can effectively connect with users throughout the MOFU phase, all the way through to the conversion phase thus achieving:
- Increased brand visibility
- Increased demand for their products or services
These new Google Ads campaigns are designed to boost the connection between brands and users, thus increasing demand and improving conversion data. According to Google, up to 87% of consumers say that platforms like YouTube help them make purchasing decisions faster, while 91% act immediately upon discovering new brands, products, or services in Google feeds.
Demand Gen is the perfect solution for platforms like YouTube Shorts, where brands can use unique features designed specifically for the needs of social marketing.
Characteristics of Demand Gen Campaigns
Google presents Demand Gen as an evolution of Discovery campaigns, as they are able to adapt and better respond to consumers' demands and needs. The reason? These new campaigns mainly target the platforms with the most user interaction, and incorporate new features that allow brands to exploit Google's artificial intelligence to offer more optimal and personalized experiences.
Here are some of the most notable features of the new Demand Gen campaigns:
- Ads with images and video in a single campaign. With Demand Gen, brands can capture the attention of new leads with ads in different formats, according to the characteristics of each platform. For example, under the umbrella of a single campaign, ads can be developed in the form of short videos, carousels, stories or static images, among others.
- Audience segmentation. One of the positive things about Demand Gen, in addition to the fact that brands can keep their historical data and information from Discovery campaigns, is segmentation based on lookalike audiences. In essence, these new ads allow you to analyze customers who have previously interacted with a brand and find similar profiles that are likely to become leads. Some of the data points that Google processes are past purchases, interactions on YouTube, and others.
- Campaign optimization. In addition to optimizing conversions and using value-based bidding strategies, Demand Gen campaigns allow you to drive high-value leads to your website by optimizing visits.
- Ad Preview. One of the great things about Demand Gen campaigns is the redesigned workflows and the option to preview ads before they run. This way, brands can see how creatives work on each of the different platforms, and optimize where ads are placed to find the best way to engage new customers based on A/B testing.
Configuring Your Demand Gen Campaigns
If you currently have active Discovery campaigns and want to switch to Demand Gen, no problem! As soon as you make the switch, the active campaign will be automatically upgraded to Demand Gen and you will be able to take advantage of the new features and opportunities offered by this new Google Ads format.
Here's how you can activate Demand Gen in your ads:
- As of October, you can create Demand Gen campaigns from scratch. If you want to upgrade your existing Discovery campaigns to Demand Gen you will need to request this from your Google account. If you do not currently have a Google team for your accounts, Discovery campaigns will start to be automatically upgraded in November.
- In early 2024, automatic upgrades will begin for all remaining Discovery campaigns, and the new year will start with lots of new features and functionalities for advertisers!
Demand Gen campaigns are an opportunity for brands to harness the full potential and opportunities provided by Google's most widely-used tools. They enable brands to focus on personalized messaging and content creation, allowing them to adapt to evolving market dynamics and changing consumer preferences.
