Demand Gen: The Underrated Google Ads Campaign You Should Be Testing in 2026

Demand Gen: The Underrated Google Ads Campaign You Should Be Testing in 2026

Google’s Demand Gen campaign type is quickly becoming a high-impact option for advertisers who want to reach users beyond the search box. As Jyll Saskin Gales wrote for Search Engine Land, “Demand Gen is the most underrated campaign type in Google Ads, and that has to end.”

Demand Gen blends visual creative and audience-first targeting to deliver ads across Google-owned surfaces such as YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. For advertisers who want to create awareness, consideration, and measurable action without relying solely on keyword intent, Demand Gen offers a compelling middle ground between classic Display and Search-driven campaigns.

What Demand Gen does differently

Unlike Search campaigns that react to a user’s query, Demand Gen “pushes creative — images and/or videos — to users based on who they are, not what they are typing,” giving advertisers the ability to influence users earlier in the decision process. Google’s documentation explains this positioning succinctly: “Demand Gen campaigns capture engagement and action across YouTube, including Shorts, Discover, Gmail, and Google Display Network.”

The takeaway is simple: Demand Gen targets people, not keywords. That shift lets brands use immersive creative to spark interest and guide users toward conversion paths where appropriate.

Key features and controls

Demand Gen supports a mix of image, carousel, and video creatives, and — importantly for e-commerce — can be connected to your Google Merchant Center feed to serve shoppable ad experiences. Targeting options include lookalike (similar) audiences, remarketing, in-market and affinity segments, detailed demographics, and custom segments based on prior search behavior.

Advertisers can also choose from several bid strategies, including Maximize Clicks, Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value, Target CPC, Target CPA and Target ROAS. Notably, Demand Gen allows Target CPC — offering manual cost-per-click control that many automated campaign types do not provide.

Why it often beats standard Display

There are three practical reasons to prefer Demand Gen over old-school Display campaigns:

• Inventory quality — demand gen primarily serves on Google’s authenticated, owned properties, avoiding the low-quality placements that plague open web Display buys.
• Spam reduction — the controlled inventory and higher audience quality significantly reduce the risk of bot or low-quality leads.
• Cost-to-quality balance — while CPCs can be higher than Display, the traffic quality is generally superior, and unit costs remain lower than Search in many categories.

How to start testing

Set up a small, focused test first. For businesses with modest budgets, prioritize remarketing and custom segments of high-performing search terms. Ecommerce teams should run a paired test — one Demand Gen campaign using product feeds and one using lifestyle creative — to determine what drives the best mix of direct sales and longer-term engagement. Larger advertisers should add Demand Gen as an always-on audience layer to maintain awareness across the buyer journey.

What to measure and optimize

Demand Gen offers asset-level reporting, audience insights, and channel segmentation, so you can identify which images, videos, audiences, and placements deliver the best results. Use those signals to:

• Pause or replace underperforming creative assets.
• Exclude low-performing placements or channels.
• Adjust audience mix based on conversion lift and engagement metrics.

In addition, track both short-term conversions (purchases, form fills) and mid-funnel indicators (video views, site visits, product page engagement) to understand how Demand Gen feeds downstream performance in Search and Performance Max campaigns.

Implications for advertisers and SEOs

For advertisers, Demand Gen presents a practical way to capture attention before users actively search, which can amplify the impact of search and shopping programs later in the funnel. For SEO teams, the rise of visually driven demand signals underscores the value of aligned creative and content strategies that feed both paid and organic discovery paths (for example, using YouTube and Discover-optimized assets that reinforce brand messages discovered in paid placements).

Jyll Saskin Gales’ practical guidance and Google’s product documentation together make a clear case: Demand Gen is not a replacement for Search or Performance Max but a complementary channel that deserves testing and optimization in 2026.

Attribution and further reading

This article was informed by Jyll Saskin Gales’ piece on Search Engine Land and official Google Ads documentation. For the original analysis, see: Why Demand Gen is the most underrated campaign type in Google Ads — Jyll Saskin Gales, Search Engine Land.

Quote from the original Search Engine Land article: “Demand Gen is the most underrated campaign type in Google Ads, and that has to end.” — Jyll Saskin Gales

Quote from Google Ads Help: “Demand Gen campaigns capture engagement and action across YouTube, including Shorts, Discover, Gmail, and Google Display Network.” — Google Ads Help

Original Search Engine Land article: https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-demand-gen-campaign-type-467213