What Is a Demand Gen Campaign? Google's New Home for Display

A demand gen campaign is a Google Ads campaign type that shows image, video, carousel and product ads across YouTube, Discover, Gmail, the Google Display Network and (in beta) Google Maps, and it is now where Google's Display ads are moving.

Since June 2026 Google has been rolling out a tool that upgrades Display campaigns to Demand Gen, and standalone Display campaigns will eventually go away. Here's how Demand Gen works, the Display timeline, how it compares with Performance Max and Video, and how to set one up or migrate.

Key takeaways

• Demand Gen serves visual ads on YouTube (in-stream, in-feed and Shorts), Discover, Gmail, the Google Display Network and Maps (beta) from one campaign, with channel controls in every ad group.
• Google announced on 26 May 2026 that Display campaigns are moving into Demand Gen. The migration tool began rolling out in June 2026, and Google expects the transition to finish by 2027.
• You can still run Display-only ads: select only the Google Display Network in a Demand Gen ad group.
• Google's migration tool carries over settings, budget and up to 42 days of performance history, so learning takes about one to two days. Migrated campaigns can't be switched back.
• Demand Gen has no Manual CPC bidding. Set up conversion tracking first, and with Target CPA plan a daily budget of at least 10 times your target CPA.

What is a Demand Gen campaign?#

Demand Gen is Google's campaign type for reaching people before they search for you. You supply video and image assets, and Google's AI picks which to show to the people most likely to be interested. Google announced it in June 2023, and it has been absorbing older campaign types since: Video action campaigns were upgraded to Demand Gen between July 2025 and April 2026, and Display is next.

According to Google's About Demand Gen campaigns help page, one campaign can serve on:

• YouTube: in-stream, in-feed (Home feed, Watch next and YouTube search) and Shorts;
• Discover, the feed in the Google app;
• Gmail;
• the Google Display Network, which Google now puts at more than 2 million sites and apps;
• Google Maps, in beta, and only when the account has a non-affiliate location asset enabled.

Ads can be single images (landscape, square, portrait or vertical), videos (horizontal, square or vertical), carousels of 2 to 10 image cards, or product ads from a Google Merchant Center feed. Image-only and video-only campaigns can serve, but Google says using both usually performs better.

Bidding options are Maximize clicks, Target CPC, Maximize conversions, Target CPA, Maximize conversion value and Target ROAS. Billing is mixed: Google's Demand Gen FAQ says YouTube video and Display Network ads are charged per thousand impressions, while Discover image ads are charged per click.

Why is Google moving Display campaigns into Demand Gen?#

On 26 May 2026 Google announced on its Ads & Commerce blog that Google Display Ads has a new home in Demand Gen. The Display Network itself stays; what changes is that you buy it through Demand Gen, alongside YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps, instead of in a separate Display campaign.

Google's pitch is the features Display lacked: carousel ads, more video formats, lookalike segments, generative AI image tools, reporting by YouTube format, Target CPC bidding and total campaign budgets. Google says advertisers who added the Display Network to their Demand Gen campaigns saw a 9.5% average increase in ROI (Google internal data, August 2025).

The Display to Demand Gen timeline#

Source: Google's Display migration guide and its Help Center page on the Display Network in Demand Gen.

As of 1 November 2026, Google's Help Center still gives no date for the last two steps. You may see January 2027 quoted elsewhere as the cut-off for new Display campaigns; Google hasn't published that date, so treat it as unconfirmed. Google says it will send account notifications as key dates approach.

What changes for Display advertisers?#

Several Display settings have no equivalent in Demand Gen. Google's migration guide lists these as unsupported:

• Bidding: Manual CPC, viewable impressions (vCPM), pay for conversions, bid adjustments, seasonality adjustments and portfolio bid strategies.
• Audiences: combined audiences; household income and parental status work only as soft targeting, not hard targeting.
• Measurement: Brand Lift and Search Lift studies for the Display Network.
• Ads: uploaded HTML5 and third-party ads, until they arrive in Demand Gen.

Other differences to know:

• Brand safety is set at account level: content suitability, topic and placement exclusions generally can't be set per campaign or ad group. Placement data is in the "Where ads showed" report.
• Frequency is managed by Google. The Demand Gen FAQ says you can't set an impression frequency cap.
• Sensitive categories are usually limited to YouTube and generally not eligible for Gmail or the Display Network.

Some settings block the migration tool until you remove them: shared budgets, ad group bid modifiers, lead form assets, product filters, campaign-level content exclusions, custom promo text and price prefixes, and click-to-call assets (replace them with a call to action).

Demand Gen vs Display vs Performance Max vs Video#

In short: for conversions from every Google channel in one campaign, including Search, use Performance Max. For visual ads on YouTube and Google's feeds, with control over each ad group's channels, use Demand Gen. Video campaigns now focus on reach and views, because their conversion subtype (Video action campaigns) has already become Demand Gen.

How to create a Demand Gen campaign#

These steps follow Google's Create a Demand Gen campaign guide. Before you start, set up conversion tracking with the Google tag, which Google lists among the campaign's requirements.

1. Start the campaign. In Google Ads, click Create, then Campaign, and choose Demand Gen. To run product ads, turn on Run a product feed campaign (this limits the campaign to product ads).
2. Pick your objective and conversion goals. Options include Sales, Leads, Website traffic, App promotion and Local store visits and promotions.
3. Choose a bid strategy. Maximize conversions or Target CPA for leads and sales, Maximize conversion value or Target ROAS for tracked values, Maximize clicks or Target CPC for traffic.
4. Set the budget. A daily budget is an average per day; a total budget is spread evenly across the campaign's dates and needs a start and end date.
5. Set devices, locations and languages. Location and language are set per ad group by default. To use radius targeting, turn on Enable campaign level location and language targeting; you can't switch back after publishing.
6. Choose channels in the ad group. In the Channels panel, keep All Google channels (Google's recommendation, optionally including the Display Network) or pick Let me choose and select from YouTube in-stream, in-feed and Shorts, Discover, Gmail, Maps and Google Display Network, as Google's channel controls guide explains.
7. Add audiences. Combine custom segments, your data segments, lookalike segments, interests and detailed demographics. Optimized targeting is on by default and recommended; it can reach people beyond your chosen audiences. A new lookalike segment takes about 72 hours to fill.
8. Build the ads. Choose video, single image, carousel or (with a feed) product. Add up to 5 logos, your headlines and descriptions, and check Ad strength.
9. Publish. Allow at least 24 hours for ads to be reviewed.

For images, Google's Demand Gen asset specs recommend 1200 × 628 (landscape), 1200 × 1200 (square), 960 × 1200 (portrait) and 1080 × 1920 (vertical, for Shorts), as JPG or PNG up to 5 MB. Logos are square, at least 144 × 144 (1200 × 1200 recommended), up to 150 KB. Uploaded static display ads (Display Network only) use standard sizes such as 300 × 250, up to 150 KB. Videos must be at least 5 seconds long, and videos under 10 seconds can't serve as YouTube in-stream ads.

How to migrate a Display campaign to Demand Gen#

Google recommends its migration tool over rebuilding campaigns by hand: a manual copy starts without history and can struggle to ramp up. The steps from Google's migration guide:

1. Find your Display campaigns. Go to Campaigns, click the filter icon, open Attributes, choose Campaign type, tick Display and click Apply.
2. Fix blockers. Remove the unsupported settings listed above (shared budgets, bid modifiers, lead forms and so on) and add a logo where an ad has none (otherwise the tool adds a placeholder).
3. Wait after edits. Google says to wait at least 4 hours after making changes before you migrate.
4. Select and upgrade. Tick the campaigns, open the Edit menu and choose Upgrade to Demand Gen. Read the alert about what transfers, then click Apply. Google advises against batches of more than 100 campaigns.
5. Check the result under Tools > All bulk actions. Migrated campaigns show the type "Demand Gen", the label "Pasted as Demand Gen" and the name "[original name] #2".

What happens next:

• Settings, learning, budget and status (paused or enabled) carry over, with up to 42 days of performance history. Google says learning then takes about one to two days.
• The original Display campaign is marked Removed but stays in the account for reporting for up to 5 years. You can't revert a migrated campaign.
• The Display Network stays selected during migration; you can add YouTube or Gmail afterwards.
• Ads are treated as new and must be approved again.
• Spend from earlier that day isn't counted, so the new campaign starts with a full daily budget, and delivery may run high or low for the first 24 hours.
• Don't migrate a campaign while a Conversion Lift or similar study is running: the new campaign won't be linked to it.

Google's best practices for Demand Gen#

Google's migration guide and its Demand Gen help pages give these recommendations:

• Add more creative, including a logo and video. Google says image and video together usually perform better than either alone.
• Keep migrated campaigns Display-only at first for a clean transfer, then test other channels. For new campaigns, Google's performance guide says to run on all channels unless you have a specific reason not to.
• Start bids near your Display levels, change them by no more than 15% at a time, and wait a week between changes.
• Wait for about 50 conversions before changing bids or making big edits.
• Consolidate ad groups. Google suggests merging ad groups with fewer than about 30 conversions in 30 days.
• Budget for the target. Google's Demand Gen guides say a daily budget of at least 10 times your target CPA; its low-budget troubleshooting page suggests 20 times.
• Set a conversion attribution window longer than 28 days, and match your old Display audiences before testing lookalikes.

Practical notes for small businesses in India#

If your Display campaigns use Manual CPC, migration also means moving to automated bidding, because Demand Gen doesn't support Manual CPC. A few practical points for smaller accounts:

• Fix tracking first. Without conversion tracking you're limited to click bidding, which Google says shouldn't be used for conversion efficiency. If sales are few, Google suggests adding lighter actions, such as add to basket, as non-biddable goals to help the campaign learn.
• Do the budget maths in rupees. As an example only: with a target cost per lead of ₹400, Google's 10× guidance means about ₹4,000 a day, and 20× means ₹8,000. If that's too much, start with Maximize clicks (no minimum) or fewer ad groups. Google's troubleshooting page also quotes US-dollar figures, such as $100 a day per ad group; treat them as guidance, not a rule.
• Make vertical creative. A 9:16 image (1080 × 1920) and a vertical video let you serve on YouTube Shorts.
• Migrate before the automatic switch, so you can fix blockers, check budgets and replace placeholder logos on your own schedule.

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