In today’s complex digital landscape, consumers turn to visual-first content to get ideas and inspiration across platforms. To stay relevant, brands need to show up when and where it matters most to their audience.

YouTube, for instance, fosters deeper connections than traditional social media. In fact, Gen Z viewers rank YouTube #1 when it comes to feeling like they’re doing something quality with their time,1 and 61% of Gen Zs agree they feel closer to creators they watch on YouTube than on other platforms.2 This translates into strong results: a Nielsen analysis found that YouTube delivers 2.3x higher long-term ROAS than paid social.3

In 2023, we launched Demand Gen campaigns to help businesses build deeper engagements with potential customers and boost online sales and leads. Demand Gen helps you create and convert demand on YouTube and Google’s most visual, immersive surfaces when consumers aren’t searching for you. It offers AI-powered features with flexible controls to connect your business with the right customers wherever they are in their buying journeys.

Today, we’re introducing new ways to help you enhance your Demand Gen campaigns — including expanded controls to customize campaigns for specific channels, new creative enhancements, and richer product and in-store details in your ads. We’ll also share an update on the upgrade timeline to transition 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.

Additionally, we’re adding Google Display inventory to Demand Gen to help you stay top-of-mind with more customers wherever they are browsing content — reaching over 90% of the global internet population across more than 3 million sites and apps.

You can precisely choose where your ads appear across YouTube and Google with channel controls in Demand Gen.

To maximize reach, we encourage all advertisers to take advantage of the full inventory in Demand Gen to fluidly optimize across channels. Learn more about the benefits of cross-channel optimization here.

Multiply your creative impact

Compelling creatives fuel successful campaigns. This requires a strong variety of assets that meet the specifications of different inventory and formats so you can show up when it matters — and that resonate with the diverse needs and interests of your customers. To help you craft stronger ad creatives, we’re introducing more ways to tailor your assets to different screens and formats:

• Demand Gen offers various video and image formats to help you craft unique brand stories on YouTube. Starting in late February you can also run 9:16 vertical image ads on Shorts to create a more immersive, full-screen experience.
• Last November, we launched video enhancements in Demand Gen, allowing you to flip your original video and create new videos in different aspect ratios. In the coming weeks, we’ll roll out a new feature to help you create shorter versions of your videos at scale.

Create shorter versions of your videos at scale with new video enhancements.

You’ll also find an improved ad creation flow in Demand Gen. You’ll now have the option to select the specific types of video enhancements that you’d like to apply to your ads to maximize the variety of your video assets. If needed, you can opt out and manually edit your videos directly in the flow. And you can now share ad previews with your creative stakeholders outside of Google Ads to make the feedback and approval process more efficient.

Drive sales with a more seamless purchase journey

Next, we have new features coming specifically for retailers to help you drive more sales throughout the purchase journey and create a smoother online-to-offline shopping experience:

• For advertisers with a Google Merchant Center account, we’re rolling out a new experience in Demand Gen with product feeds in a few weeks to unlock deeper product discovery. Customers can instantly access full product details directly from your ads, seamlessly transitioning from one product details page to another.

Get full product details directly from your ads with improved experiences in Demand Gen with product feeds.

• 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.

Contact your Google account team today to learn more about the beta for both features.

Show real-time local product availability in your ads with local offers.

Compare performance across platforms

Lastly, we’re introducing new reporting columns in Google Ads to help you better understand how Demand Gen campaigns perform compared to your paid social efforts and how they inform budget decisions. These columns, which have started to roll out to advertisers globally this month, will include view-through conversions to align with how social advertising platforms measure performance. They will also isolate the impact of Demand Gen from other Google campaigns to provide a more comparable view across channels.

Check out important upgrade milestones for Video Action Campaigns

Last year we announced the upgrade of Video Action Campaigns to help advertisers access the same and even more new features through Demand Gen. Many advertisers are already seeing better performance after transitioning to Demand Gen. Based on a Nielsen analysis, on average, Demand Gen delivers 58% higher ROAS than Video Action Campaigns.4 That’s why we’re taking the next steps to help simplify the process to upgrade.

If you currently use Video Action Campaigns, here are some key upgrade milestones and answers to important FAQs:

• Starting in April, following the launch of channel controls, you’ll no longer be able to create new Video Action Campaigns in Google Ads and Display & Video 360 platforms. We recommend that you start upgrading to Demand Gen yourself before the automatic upgrade goes into effect starting in July to maintain full control of your campaigns.
  • 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.
• Starting in July, we will auto-upgrade any remaining Video Action Campaigns in Google Ads. This upgrade process may take a few months to complete and not all accounts will be upgraded at the same time.
  • Your historical learnings in Video Action Campaigns will be applied to your new Demand Gen campaigns to help maintain consistent performance. Your inventory settings will be preserved, ensuring your ads continue to serve only on YouTube and Google video partners (if you’ve opted in) until you adjust the settings.

Marks and Spencer (M&S), a global clothing and homeware retailer, saw big success using Demand Gen to drive better results. Partnering with Incubeta, M&S tested Demand Gen and exceeded their forecasted ROAS by 186%, with a 66% lower CPA. The campaign also performed favorably compared to their paid social campaigns.

To learn more about how to upgrade Video Action Campaigns to Demand Gen, visit our FAQ page. To learn more about how you can drive performance with Demand Gen, check out our best practices guide.