Telecom

New ways to help you drive performance with Demand Gen

Published

1 year ago

February 3, 2025

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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.

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Telecom

Africa to get AI Data Centres Through Three-way Partnership

Published

22 hours ago

May 14, 2026

Chike Onwuegbuchi

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Localised, industrial-grade artificial intelligence (AI) data centre infrastructure will be delivered across Africa and the Global South, following a strategic alliance between sovereign AI infrastructure company Amini, electronics manufacturing giant Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn) and French digital firm Bull.

The three-way partnership aims to close the sovereign compute gap by allowing governments, telecommunications operators, financial institutions and energy companies to acquire and operate computing systems domestically.

Africa’s digital economy is projected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030, which is driving regional demand for AI-enabled services across public administration, energy and finance, the parties say.

However, advanced cloud and AI processing capabilities have historically remained concentrated within a small number of external providers. The partnership seeks to establish locally anchored infrastructure, enabling domestic organisations to retain control over data and digital sovereignty.

Under the agreement, Amini will drive local market engagement and deployment, leveraging its existing platforms for locally anchored data capacity.

Foxconn will provide specialised hardware, server architecture and modular data centre technologies in its first dedicated infrastructure initiative focused on African markets.

Bull integrates its expertise in high-performance computing, quantum computing and emerging-market digital capacity. By operating independent systems, critical national sectors can bypass reliance on external platform architectures.

Financial entities can deploy independent credit, risk assessment and financial inclusion algorithms, while energy providers can implement localised machine learning for predictive maintenance and national grid optimisation.

“AI is becoming foundational infrastructure for every economy, yet most of the world still lacks the compute capacity required to participate on its own terms,” said Kate Kallot, founder and CEO of Amini. “This partnership ensures that Africa and the Global South can acquire, own and operate AI infrastructure locally, with sovereignty and long-term economic value at its core.”

Alexandre Jouys, chief commercial officer and head of Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa at Bull, added that Africa and more generally the Global South have the potential to emerge as a global-scale AI hub, by continuing to build regional computing capacity and supply chain independence.

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Telecom

Distinguished Industry Veteran Dr. Olusola Teniola to Chair NDSF 2026

Published

22 hours ago

May 14, 2026

Ugo Onwuaso

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The organizing committee of the 2026 Nigeria DigitalSENSE Forum (NDSF) on Internet Governance for Development (IG4D) is proud to announce Dr. Olusola Teniola as the Chairman for this year’s landmark event.

A seasoned leader with over 32 years of global experience in the telecommunications and technology sectors, Dr. Teniola brings a wealth of strategic expertise to the forum.

The Convener of NDSF and Group Executive Editor, ITREALMS Media group, Ogbuefi Remmy Nweke, welcomed the appointment, noting that Dr. Teniola’s leadership comes at a pivotal time for Nigeria’s digital economy.

Dr. Teniola currently serves as the Director of Strategic Business Initiatives at ipNX Nigeria, where he leads market expansion across West and Central Africa.

His recent contributions as a Digital Development Consultant to the World Bank Group for the May 2025 Country Private Sector Diagnostic report further underscore the high-level expertise he brings to the 2026 forum.

Dr. Teniola’s career is defined by high-impact leadership and infrastructure development:

He previously served as COO for Oodua Infraco Resource Limited, overseeing the deployment of 870km of digital infrastructure in Southwest Nigeria.
He is the past President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) and succeeded Dr. Ernest Ndukwe as the National Coordinator for the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4ai).
His background includes executive roles at global giants such as British Telecom, Vodafone, Cisco Inc, and Alcatel-Lucent Technologies.
He has been a vital contributor to the Nigerian Broadband Plan (2012-2013 and 2020-2025) and currently serves on the IPv6 Council.

Dr. Teniola holds a B.Eng (Hons) in Computer & Information Engineering from South Bank University, an MBA from the University of Bath School of Management, and an Honorary Doctorate (DBA) from Prowess University.

He is a Fellow of the MSME Institute of Management & Professional Studies and a member of the Chartered Institute of Directors (IoD) Nigeria.

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Telecom

NCC Says Telecom Industry on Course to Improve Quality of Service

Published

22 hours ago

May 14, 2026

Ugo Onwuaso

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Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says ongoing investments and regulatory interventions in the telecommunications sector are expected to address persistent quality of service challenges across the country.

NCC

In a statement signed by the Head of Public Affairs, Nnenna Ukoha, on Wednesday, the commission acknowledged public concerns over dropped calls, slow internet speeds, unstable data services and service disruptions affecting consumers.

The commission said telecommunications services had become central to work, education, business, access to essential services and social connectivity, adding that consumers deserved reliable services and value for money.

According to the NCC, improving quality of service has remained a major regulatory priority over the past two years.

It said the commission had intensified monitoring of Mobile Network Operators, Internet Service Providers and Tower Companies, while strengthening data-driven oversight and stakeholder engagement to address structural challenges affecting service delivery.

The commission disclosed that the sector was undergoing one of its largest network expansion and modernisation phases in recent years following a prolonged period of under-investment.

It said Mobile Network Operators invested more than N2.13 trillion in network infrastructure and upgrades in 2025, while Tower Companies invested an additional N373.8 billion.

According to the NCC, the investments supported the addition and upgrade of more than 2,800 telecommunications sites nationwide to improve network coverage and capacity.

The commission said interventions included deployment of additional 4G and 5G infrastructure, fibre backhaul expansion, targeted deployments in high-demand urban areas, expansion into underserved communities and equipment upgrades.

It added that operators had committed to adding or upgrading more than 12,000 sites in 2026, with nearly 3,000 already completed.

The NCC also said over 730 additional 5G sites had been deployed across 27 states in 2026.

The commission noted that 4G penetration rose from 45 per cent in January 2024 to 54 per cent currently, while national median download speeds improved from 16.5Mbps to 20Mbps within the same period.

It further said power availability at telecom towers improved from a national average of 99.3 per cent in January 2025 to 99.7 per cent.

According to the commission, spectrum reallocation among major operators and spectrum block rearrangements were also being implemented to improve network efficiency and service performance.

The NCC, however, acknowledged persistent external challenges affecting service quality, including vandalism, theft of telecom equipment, fibre cuts, power disruptions and access denial for maintenance.

It disclosed that more than 27,000 avoidable fibre-cut incidents linked mainly to road construction and vandalism were recorded in 2025.

The commission said it was collaborating with the Office of the National Security Adviser and other stakeholders to implement the Presidential Order on Critical National Information Infrastructure.

It added that operators had been mandated to notify consumers of major service outages promptly and restore services within specified timeframes.

The NCC said enforcement of the updated Quality of Service Regulations 2024 commenced in November 2025, including consumer compensation measures for poor service quality and additional investment obligations on Tower Companies.

It warned that regulatory action would continue against operators that fail to deliver measurable improvements.

The commission reaffirmed its commitment to ensuring affordable, reliable and high-quality telecommunications services for all Nigerians.

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