Google released a new campaign type only a year ago called Demand Gen. And for those of you who were running Discovery campaigns, these were automatically migrated in Q1 2024.
Demand Gen is an image-based campaign type and does exactly what it says on the tin. It works towards generating longer-term demand for your brand. But unlike Search and Performance Max, users aren’t searching for a specific product. Instead they are actively browsing multiple platforms - like YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Discover and Gmail - and just like YouTube advertising they are not looking to make that final purchase now and then.
For an ecommerce brand, the role of the campaign is very similar to Paid Social, which is to engage with new and relevant audiences, with relevant content, and to introduce them to your brand.
Is it an upper funnel campaign? Does it drive consideration? Or is it more bottom of the funnel? Well it is a bit of everything under one campaign type - the purpose of demand gen is to engage with new audiences that are not familiar with your brand. But just like Pmax it can be feed-based, encouraging users to discover your products and land on your product pages. Unlike YouTube, we are able to drive relevant audiences to your site as opposed to driving a lot of views, which is a key difference in itself. By driving those people to your site, we are able to track their online behaviour, re-engage with them on search and shopping and track subsequent actions like conversions.
But when should we run it? From our point of view we would only run Demand Gen when both Performance Max and ADvantage+ campaigns are running and delivering results. Only at this point we’ll truly see the benefit of diversifying the channel away from ROAS driven campaigns.
1. Measurement and first party data - just like any other campaign type, ensure you are feeding the tool with the right data, including your customer match lists.
2. Setting the right KPIs - forget about ROAS or CPA targets as the objective is to put your brand in front of more relevant users. Instead track CPM (or cost per thousand impressions), CTR, average session duration, as well as cost per sessions. Focus your attention on optimising those metrics to drive better engagement and future sales.
3. Creative - work with your Paid Social team to ensure the creative you’re going to put out there is in line with their strategy. Customers expect a seamless journey, no matter which channel they are using so make sure it’s on point. Change your creative regularly to avoid ad fatigue and ensure you’re testing different formats.
4. Audience targeting - this is where many PPC managers would struggle as typically Search and Pmax rely on keyword targeting and intent, as opposed to demographic signals. So ensure you build the right audience targeting depending on your campaign objectives. Targeting lookalike audiences based on your customer data is a great place to start.
5. Tracking clicks and sessions - one common mistake is the thought that all clicks lead to a session. With Demand Gen, a click can also be counted as an engagement, like watching a video, or opening an ad on Gmail. While all clicks will never lead to a session in GA4, it is important to keep that discrepancy as low as possible to maximise your chances of tracking potential sales.
6. Finally set a test & learn agenda in place - talk to your social team and benchmark metrics like CPMs or average duration on site. Look at CTR across all audiences and work on optimising those key metrics.
Many advertisers that we work with have a clear objective which is to increase their online sales at a target ROAS. But they also understand the role of mid-funnel activity and this is what we did with Bird & Blend. To support the launch of their tea advent calendar, we launched Demand Gen activity alongside Performance Max, Search and their Meta activity. We went after lookalike audiences and we added creative used across other platforms to ensure a seamless experience. The campaign delivered great results and is now an added traffic-driving stream to their broader marketing mix.
In short, Demand Gen is part of a wider set of tools - be it on Google or Meta - that aims to generate future demand. Relying on customers to find your brand when they are already in-market is great but in order to secure those future sales at a lower cost, investing up the funnel is as important as delivering an immediate ROAS.
