Demand Gen Campaigns: What’s New and How to Use Them?

You all know good old discovery campaigns. It has been an essential part and revenue driver of every account since its introduction in 2019. Well, its short journey comes to an end. Starting October 2023, all your active discovery campaigns will be available to be upgraded to Demand Gen campaigns. Let us guide you what’s new and how to best prepare for this upgrade.

Table of Contents:

1. What’s New?
2. How to Prepare for the Upgrade?
3. Next Steps

What’s New?

Demand Gen campaigns provide an array of distinctive attributes specifically crafted to cater to the requirements of contemporary social marketers. Studies indicate that 91% of consumers promptly took steps after stumbling upon fresh products or brands via Google feeds, such as Discover or Gmail. By employing Demand Gen strategies, your most effective video and image assets seamlessly merge across highly visual and entertainment-centric channels, including YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Discover, and Gmail. This suite of platforms collectively engages with an excess of 3 billion users every month as they stream, scroll, and connect.

Main updates include:

1. Expanded placements (adding YT shorts and In-Stream)

   The addition of YouTube Shorts as a new venue for ads taps into the increasing popularity of short, engaging videos, particularly among younger audiences. Additionally, In-Stream ads are video ads that play within other streaming video content on YouTube. This new placement option provides an opportunity for broad reach and is excellent for more extended storytelling or product demonstrations.

2. Video ads

   Video ads offer diverse formats, including bumper ads, skippable video ads, and non-skippable video ads, to cater to different user behaviors. They generally have higher engagement rates compared to static ads, making them ideal for campaigns aimed at increasing brand awareness and conversions.





3. Google re-introduces similar audiences, but now it is called lookalike audiences (just like on Meta)

   This feature now aligns more closely with Meta’s lookalike capabilities, offering more granular audience segmentation based on various characteristics and behaviors. The update also simplifies cross-platform advertising strategy by adopting similar naming conventions and functionalities as on Meta.



4. Maximize clicks bidding

   This feature automatically sets your bids to help get as many clicks as possible within your budget, which is particularly useful for campaigns that have limited budgets but aim for high visibility.

5. Brand lift & Search lift studies

   Brand lift studies measure the direct impact of your ads on brand perception and awareness, while Search Lift studies help you understand how your ad campaigns affect organic and paid search activities. Both of these studies provide actionable insights that can inform your future advertising strategies, ensuring maximum return on investment.

How to Prepare for the Upgrade?

• Plan your migration early: Anticipate and allocate a brief period to enhance your Discovery campaigns, leveraging the expanded outreach opportunities across YouTube. Integrate novel video formats into your campaigns to maximize their impact. Advertisers stand to gain a significant advantage by securing early access to this extended reach, all at a discounted rate, before the impending migration set for early 2024.
• Prepare new assets: Video ads will become an integral part of demand gen campaigns, and they will help you generate much revenue, so prepare square and portrait sizes of the video in advance for great success.
• Make sure to increase your budget when you add video ads because your campaign spending will ramp up once you add video assets, and not to lose the traffic, be prepared.

Next Steps

Demand Gen campaigns can potentially wield considerable influence as a campaign type, effectively enhancing your current search and social campaigns. The key is to initiate the migration process early, allowing you to capitalize on the fresh inventory of video ads available across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. Should the utilization of Demand Gen campaigns appear to be a complex endeavor, explore our tailored solutions to assist you in optimizing various pivotal campaign types and placements, ensuring you extract the utmost value.