What are Demand Gen campaigns?

It runs visual ads where people browse rather than search. Think a video in a feed, an image in an inbox, a short on YouTube.

Search ads catch people who already want something. Visual ads aim earlier, at people who have not typed the product name yet. That is the idea. Whether it works for your shop is a measurement question.

For ecommerce, the product feed matters. Google's documentation says Demand Gen can use product feeds¹. That lets the ads show items from your catalogue.

Not on last click. A person may see a video, search your brand later and buy. Last-click attribution gives that sale to the search. Demand Gen gets nothing.

The reverse also happens. Demand Gen, Performance Max and search can each claim the same sale in their own reports. Add the three and you may count one order more than once.

So the question is incrementality: what sales happened because of these ads, over and above what would have happened anyway? A holdout or geo test answers it. A platform dashboard does not. Google's own help page points to brand, search and conversion lift measurement to judge whether the spend is paying off¹.

For where this channel fits in a budget decision, see paid media strategy for ecommerce.

For ZFD: Our view is that a new Google format earns budget by what a test shows, not by its place in the report.

Demand Gen is a visual-first format on a defined set of surfaces. Performance Max is a goal-based campaign type that reaches all of Google's inventory from one campaign, with Google's AI managing bids, budget and placements. The two can overlap in where they show ads, so measure them separately.