How to Use Demand Gen Campaigns on Google Ads (2026)
Capture interest before the search occurs by extending paid social strategies across YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and the Google Display Network. Demand Gen campaigns connect your brand with qualified customers across the broader Google ecosystem.
I spent most of 2025 evangelizing Demand Gen to folks who were skeptical about Performance Max, and I’m standing by that recommendation in 2026. Google exerts a massive influence on everyday life—in the search bar and beyond.
Let’s focus on the beyond (that’s where Demand Gen comes into play):
More Americans watched TV on YouTube than any other platform in December 2025 per Nielsen.
YouTube Shorts reached 200 billion daily views in Q2 ‘25.
Google Maps boasts more than 2 billion monthly active users worldwide.
Your audience (no matter how niche) engages with Google properties. And Demand Gen provides the inventory and detailed targeting to connect with them. Plus, Google has significantly improved the ad product over the past year, introducing creative A/B testing tools and channel controls. They report that advertisers using Demand Gen in 2025 realized a 26% YoY increase in conversions per dollar spent on the channel.
So, let’s dig into the advantages of Demand Gen in 2026, when to add it to your Google Ads media mix, and how to build out a winning creative strategy.
Happy testing!
-Tyler
(p.s. Is Demand Gen part of your Google Ads strategy in 2026?)
What are Demand Gen ads?
Demand Gen is a Google Ads campaign type designed to reach users across Google’s advertising ecosystem, including on YouTube, Shorts, Discover, Gmail, and the Google Display Network. Think of Demand Gen as an extension of your paid social advertising strategy. The campaign type allows advertisers to expand their reach on Google, leveraging the platform’s machine learning and audience signals along with dynamic video, static, and carousel ads.
While Google Search campaigns use intent signals to capture existing demand, Demand Gen campaigns use contextual signals to push your messaging to a qualified audience. This ideally, well, creates demand.
Advantages of Demand Gen campaigns
Increase reach beyond Search. Demand Gen campaigns provide access to inventory across Google properties, including Search, Display YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Maps. With Search, your audience is limited by existing demand. Demand Gen unlocks relevant audiences among Google’s 3+ billion monthly active users. In other words, you don’t have to wait for prospects to look for you. You can drive consideration by reaching them on impactful surfaces.
Control placements, unlike Performance Max. Demand Gen campaigns allow you to select specific placements instead of automatically running ads across all Google properties. If you only want to serve on YouTube Shorts, you can limit your targeting to YouTube Shorts.
Find qualified leads with Google’s machine learning and intent signals. Demand Gen campaigns help you retarget users who are already considering your brand and find folks in market for your services through Google’s full suite of targeting capabilities.
Unlock lower cost inventory within the broader Google ecosystem. Search is inventory constrained and can be expensive. Demand Gen opens up lower cost opportunities on platforms with more available inventory, bringing down the cost of reaching users.
Re-engage prospects with smart retargeting. Reconnect with recent website viewers or lapsed leads.
Setting expectations: YouTube drives consideration. Per Google, users are 2x more likely to use YouTube for researching brands and products than other social media platforms. As such, Demand Gen campaigns are consideration campaigns that behave more like paid social activations than paid search campaigns. We use them to reach top- and mid-funnel audiences and to retarget leads across Google surfaces. Expect higher costs per lead since you’re reaching users further up the funnel.
Audience targeting options for Demand Gen campaigns
Demand Gen is different from Google Search. Search puts your ad in front of customers when they show intent (through keywords). Demand Gen pushes your creative to where your audience spends time. It focuses on user behavior and signals instead of what they’re searching for in a given moment. The effect is that you don’t have to wait for your audience to come to you.
Demand Gen campaigns let advertisers leverage Google’s full suite of targeting capabilities.
Retargeting: Reach recent website visitors, folks who have followed or watched videos on your YouTube channel, or existing customers.
Custom segments: Build custom audiences of users who have searched for relevant terms or users who engage with specific types of websites or apps.
In-market audiences: Use Google’s machine learning to reach folks who are actively looking for your product or services.
Affinity audiences: Target users based on their interests.
Detailed demographics: Segment campaigns by demographics, including age, location, and more.
Lookalike audiences: Like Meta, Google allows advertisers to create lookalike audiences that include folks with similar characteristics to your existing customers. However, effective March 2026, Google is changing the way lookalike audiences function in Demand Gen campaigns. Lookalikes will default to a suggestion mode unless advertisers opt out of this update.
Pro tip: If you turn on optimized targeting, watch your share of spend by targeting closely, especially if you’re using Demand Gen for retargeting. We’ve seen Google’s automated targeting find great new leads, and we’ve seen it eat up ad spend without driving strong results.
How do Demand Gen campaigns differ from Performance Max?
Demand Gen campaigns give businesses more control over where their ads appear, who they reach, and what creative is served. Performance Max campaigns depend on automation, giving Google more control over ad placements and creative combinations. Both campaign types are useful tools for reaching new customers with Google Ads, with Demand Gen helping nurture and convert mid-funnel audiences and Performance Max uncovering new customers in all funnel stages.
Designing winning creative for Demand Gen campaigns
Testing copy for Search ads is fun. But, Demand Gen gives advertisers more creative levers to pull. With single image, carousel, and video ads, Demand Gen serves compelling, multimodal ads across visually engaging surfaces like YouTube and Discover.
Which ads convert for your business will depend on your audience, positioning, and offer. In general, you should:
Focus on creative variety. Multiformat creative is a feature and a strength of Demand Gen campaigns. Don’t limit yourself to one creative approach. Test at least five single image, carousel, and video ads for every target audience.
Dig into asset-level reporting. Monitor which text, image, and video assets are actually moving the needle for your business.
Test, test, test. Performance advertising is not a set it and forget it game. Find what works by evaluating asset performance and iterate on your best ads.
Demand Gen creative specs
Headline: 40 characters max
Description: 90 characters max
Image: Landscape 1.91:1, Logo 1:1, Portrait 4:5, Square 1:1
Video: Landscape, portrait, square, vertical
Carousel: Headline, description, final URL, business name, CTA, logo 1:1, 2-10 image cards:
Landscape 1.91:1, Portrait 4:5, Square 1:1
Win on Google Ads in 2026 (and beyond)
Sometimes the key to scaling on Google is expanding beyond Search. Is testing Demand Gen campaigns part of your 2026 Google Ads strategy? Lasso provides comprehensive Google Ads management that puts every advertising dollar to work.