New ways to Help You Drive Performance with Demand Gen
In the current digital world, people are leaning towards visual content for ideas and inspiration across various platforms. To keep up, brands must be present at the right times and places for their audience. YouTube, for example, creates stronger connections compared to traditional social media. Gen Z, in particular, ranks YouTube as their top choice for feeling productive with their time, and 61% of them feel a closer bond with YouTube creators than those on other platforms. This connection leads to impressive outcomes: a Nielsen study revealed that YouTube offers 2.3 times higher long-term return on ad spend compared to paid social media.
In 2023, Google rolled out Demand Gen campaigns aimed at helping businesses engage more deeply with potential customers and increase online sales and leads. Demand Gen allows you to generate and convert interest on YouTube and Google’s most engaging visual platforms, even when consumers aren’t actively searching for you. It comes with AI-driven features and flexible controls to link your business with the right customers at any stage of their buying journey.
Today, the tech company is unveiling new methods to enhance your Demand Gen campaigns, including expanded options to tailor campaigns for specific channels, fresh creative tools, and more detailed product and in-store information in your ads. We’ll also provide an update on the timeline for transitioning your Video Action Campaigns to Demand Gen.
Control where your ads appear
We've heard from many of you that flexible controls are crucial for AI-powered campaign optimization. Building on the success of creative preferences and an early experiment, we're expanding channel controls to all available ad surfaces in Demand Gen globally starting in March. With channel controls rolling out as a beta to everyone, you’ll be able to precisely choose where your ads appear across YouTube, Discover and Gmail — including the ability to tailor your Demand Gen campaigns to serve specifically on YouTube Shorts., the company said in a blog post.
You can precisely choose where your ads appear across YouTube and Google with channel controls in Demand Gen.
On top of that, the tech company is adding Google Display inventory to Demand Gen, helping you stay in front of more customers no matter where they’re browsing — reaching over 90% of the global internet audience across more than 3 million sites and apps.
To get the most out of your reach, Google suggests that all advertisers utilize the complete inventory in Demand Gen for seamless optimization across various channels. Check out the advantages of cross-channel optimization here.
Boost your creative impact
Engaging creatives are the backbone of successful campaigns. This means having a solid mix of assets that fit the requirements of different formats and inventory, ensuring you can connect when it counts — and that appeal to the varied needs and interests of your audience. To assist you in creating more effective ad creatives, we’re rolling out additional options to customize your assets for different screens and formats:
- Demand Gen provides a range of video and image formats to help you tell unique brand stories on YouTube. Starting in late February, you’ll also be able to run 9:16 vertical image ads on Shorts for a more immersive, full-screen experience.
- Last November, Google introduced video enhancements in Demand Gen, enabling you to flip your original video and produce new videos in various aspect ratios. In the next few weeks, we’ll be launching a new feature that allows you to create shorter versions of your videos at scale
- For advertisers utilizing a Google Merchant Center account, Google will soon introduce a new experience in Demand Gen that incorporates product feeds, enabling deeper product discovery. Customers will be able to access comprehensive product details directly from your ads, allowing for a smooth transition between product detail pages.
- With local offers for Demand Gen with product feeds, you can show real-time local product availability, connecting online shoppers with your physical storefronts and driving them to nearby store locations. Then, maximize your omnichannel strategy by optimizing for both online sales and in-store visits with omnichannel bidding.
- Use the upgrade tool (available in March) to apply your historical settings and learnings from Video Action Campaigns to your new Demand Gen campaigns. This helps you upgrade while maintaining your existing strategy and driving consistent performance. Your new Demand Gen campaigns will continue to serve only on YouTube and Google video partners (if you’ve opted-in) until you adjust the settings. While channel controls in Demand Gen will be released as a beta in March, you will be able to continue serving only on YouTube just as you can do today in Video Action Campaigns.
- To instantly access new and expanded features in Demand Gen, such as a wide range of inventory and lookalike segments, we recommend creating new Demand Gen campaigns, or using the copy-and-paste tool to upgrade today. Check our FAQ page for more guidance.
- The insights gained from your previous Video Action Campaigns will be utilized in your new Demand Gen campaigns to ensure consistent performance. Your inventory settings will remain intact, allowing your ads to continue appearing exclusively on YouTube and Google video partners (if you have opted in) until you make any changes to the settings.