Google Demand Gen Campaigns: How to Use Video and Shopping Ads Together

Most PPC practitioners have a version of the same story. They maxed out Search. They scaled Shopping. They pushed Performance Max until the returns flattened. And now someone-maybe Google, maybe a stakeholder, maybe both-is asking them to try Demand Gen. The question isn't whether you should. As of September 2025, any accounts still running Video Action Campaigns had them auto-upgraded to Demand Gen.

When Google killed Video Action Campaigns, Demand Gen became the only conversion-focused video campaign type in Google Ads. The question is how you combine video and shopping assets inside this format without burning money on awareness theater. That's what this guide is for.

Demand Gen has matured into a core part of the Google Ads ecosystem-it shapes intent, feeds lower-funnel campaigns, and competes for conversion credit. Treating it as a passive branding play leaves performance on the table. The practitioners getting real results are the ones who understand the mechanics of pairing video storytelling with product feeds, then structuring campaigns so each asset type reinforces the other.

What Demand Gen Actually Is (And Why It's Not What You Think)

Let's clear up the most common misconception. Google Demand Gen has quietly become one of the most misunderstood campaign types in the Google Ads stack-many marketers still think of it as Discovery with a new name, or a top-of-funnel add-on that only works with big budgets, but that view is more outdated than ever.

Launched in 2023, Demand Gen campaigns help businesses build deeper engagements with potential customers and boost online sales and leads across YouTube and Google's most visual, immersive surfaces when consumers aren't searching for you. The campaign type supports three ad formats-single image, video, and carousel-along with product feed integration that dynamically pulls items from Google Merchant Center. Here's the shift that matters for 2026. Many advertisers saw Demand Gen suddenly driving more front-end conversions in late 2025, even when they hadn't changed their setup, because the campaign type moved closer to the mid-to-low funnel by default, altering attribution patterns. As Demand Gen expert Thomas Eccel puts it: "Demand Gen is here to create intent. Performance Max is here to capture it. When you let each one do its job, everything works better."

Where Your Ads Actually Appear

Google expanded channel controls to all available ad surfaces in Demand Gen in March 2025, allowing you to choose precisely where your ads appear across YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Google Display Network. This is a massive upgrade over the old Discovery format. You can now run Shorts-only campaigns, isolate Gmail, or let the algorithm optimize across everything.

Video ads will be displayed across Discover Feed, YouTube Feeds (Home, YouTube Search, and YouTube Watch Next), YouTube In-stream, YouTube Shorts, Gmail, and Google Display Network within Demand Gen. And since January 2026, there's another surface: Demand Gen powers Shoppable CTV, enabling viewers to seamlessly browse and purchase products while watching YouTube ads on the big screen, with campaigns that include TV screens driving an average of 7% additional conversions at the same ROI.

The Case for Combining Video and Product Feeds in One Campaign

Running video and shopping assets separately used to be the default. Demand Gen changes that equation by letting both asset types coexist and reinforce each other within a single campaign structure.

Google recommends setting up both an image and products ad and a video and products ad for best performance and full format/placement coverage. There's a practical reason: video expands your reach into placements like YouTube In-stream and Shorts where product-only ads can't serve, while product feeds unlock shoppable carousels on Discover and Gmail where video alone isn't enough. The performance data backs this up. On average, advertisers see 33% more conversions at a similar cost per action (CPA) by adding product feeds to Demand Gen campaigns. And based on a Nielsen analysis, Demand Gen delivers 58% higher ROAS than Video Action Campaigns on average. These numbers aren't aspirational-they represent the compounding effect of giving the algorithm more format options to optimize against.

How the Three Product Ad Types Work

Demand Gen product ads support three different ad types: DemandGenMultiAssetAd, which includes images that can appear as fallback when product details can't be shown; DemandGenVideoResponsiveAd, which adds videos to the product ads to expand reach to valuable YouTube placements; and DemandGenProductAd, which only shows product ads.

The Video and Products ad is where the real power lies. Adding videos to product ads expands your reach to valuable YouTube placements with rich, shoppable ad formats-upload videos in three aspect ratios (landscape, square, and vertical) to optimize for serving, and a vertical video will enable your ad to serve on YouTube Shorts for better reach.

Think of it this way: the video creates the emotional hook, and the product carousel beneath it gives viewers an immediate path to purchase. On mobile, a product panel expands below the video. On CTV, an interactive product feed appears on the side of the screen, and users can navigate this feed using their television remote control, browsing multiple products without leaving their viewing experience.

Setting Up Your First Video + Shopping Demand Gen Campaign

Getting the structure right at launch determines whether your campaign spends the next six weeks learning productively or wasting budget. Here's the step-by-step setup. Prerequisites:

• A Google Merchant Center account with an active product feed

In Google Merchant Center, ensure that you enable "Shopping ads" as a marketing method.

• Include at least 4 eligible products-though 50 or more can lead to superior performance.
• At least one video uploaded to YouTube (public or unlisted)

You need at least 100 users in your audience segment to unlock lookalike targeting features.

Campaign creation flow:

When using product feeds, toggle "Run a product feed campaign" at campaign creation, then add your conversion goals-but note that if you select this toggle, you'll only be able to create product ads in the campaign. This is an important constraint. You're committing this campaign to the product feed format.

When creating a Demand Gen campaign, you'll select one of these advertising goals: Sales, Website Traffic, Product and Brand Consideration, or Create a campaign without a goal's guidance. For mid-funnel ecommerce, Sales or Product and Brand Consideration are the right starting points. For bidding, adjust bidding strategies based on campaign stage-use Max Conversions for testing, then layer in CPA or ROAS as performance stabilizes. Resist the temptation to start with a target ROAS. The algorithm needs conversion data before it can optimize toward a return target, and setting tROAS too early starves the campaign of volume during its learning phase. Budget guidance: As a good general rule, wait 50 conversions before making changes to your campaign.

The campaign will typically have a 2-week to 6-week learning period during which Google can collect data and optimize bids effectively. Plan your budget accordingly. If your average CPA is $25, you need a daily budget that can realistically generate 50 conversions within two to three weeks-roughly $60-80/day minimum.

The Creative Strategy That Actually Drives Performance

Creative is the single biggest lever in Demand Gen. The difference between mediocre creative and great creative is 2 to 3x performance. Full stop. This isn't hyperbole-when the algorithm's targeting is largely automated, creative quality becomes your primary competitive advantage.

Video Asset Requirements

Follow the rule of three-in each ad group, include at least 3 images or videos in each aspect ratio (vertical, square, and landscape) to maximize reach and engagement across all available inventory. That means, at minimum:

• Landscape (16:9): For YouTube In-stream and desktop placements
• Square (1:1): For feed placements across Discover and Gmail
• Vertical (9:16): For YouTube Shorts

Google recommends using videos with more than 15 seconds to help maximize reach and effectiveness across available formats. For Shorts specifically, keep vertical videos under 60 seconds-10 to 20 seconds tends to perform best. Don't have three aspect ratios ready? Demand Gen's video crop and trim tool lets you manually edit the aspect ratio and duration of your videos directly within Google Ads, allowing you to seamlessly fit videos into horizontal, square, or vertical formats. It's not a substitute for native-shot vertical content, but it eliminates the excuse of not having assets ready at launch.

What Makes Video Work in Demand Gen

Captivate people in the first 5-10 seconds of the ad with a problem statement and show how your product or service solves it, then echo the call-to-action in the voiceover or include it in superimposed graphics. This ABCD framework (Attract, Brand, Connect, Direct) isn't optional. Demand Gen ads auto-play muted on most placements, so your opening frame must communicate value visually.

Prioritize assets that feel native to each format-for example, when creating YouTube Shorts, prioritize vertical video that's relatable, authentic, and connects with your audience. From practitioner experience, UGC-style content consistently outperforms polished brand videos in Demand Gen. Based on experience, UGC-style content (authentic, less polished) outperforms traditional brand videos.

Product Feed Optimization Matters More Than You Think

Here's something many people miss: your product feed optimization directly impacts your benchmarks-if your product images are low quality, your titles are vague, or your prices are wrong, your conversion rate tanks.

For Demand Gen specifically, use square (1:1) images for optimal ad coverage.

Use the short_title attribute for catchy, concise product ad titles, and use the item_group_id attribute to prevent duplicate images in your carousel. Your product feed isn't just data-it's a creative asset. The titles, images, and prices appearing in those shoppable carousels are doing the conversion work.

Audience Strategy: Prospecting vs. Remarketing Campaigns

Start with both remarketing and prospecting as separate campaigns-they will need different goals, targeting options, and possibly different placements. This is non-negotiable. One common mistake is blending remarketing and prospecting into a single campaign-these serve different purposes and perform differently, and mixing them will only obscure your data and make decision-making harder.

For remarketing campaigns, target users who engaged with your site within the last 30-90 days depending on your sales cycle. Use your video and product feed combinations to re-engage shoppers who browsed products but didn't purchase. For prospecting campaigns, lookalike audiences are your primary tool. Lookalike segments are exclusive to Demand Gen-they work by taking a seed audience and building an expanded audience of users who share similar characteristics and behavioral patterns, with three expansion levels: narrow, balanced, and broad. Start narrow for high-value product categories, then expand to balanced as performance stabilizes.

Optimized targeting is Google AI's mechanism for expanding beyond the audience segments you manually select-when enabled, your audiences function as signals rather than strict gates, and Google's internal data shows advertisers who opt in achieve 20% higher conversions at the same cost.

One critical change to watch: Google has announced that starting March 15, 2026, Lookalike segments in Demand Gen will transition from strict audience targeting to AI-powered audience signals-a significant structural change worth understanding before it takes effect.

Avoiding the Performance Max Cannibalization Trap

If you're already running Performance Max, you need a clear strategy for how Demand Gen fits alongside it. Since PMax and Demand Gen both operate across many of the same channels, there's a considerable risk that PMax will cannibalize the audience and impact of your Demand Gen campaigns.

The solution is role clarity. Google's "AI Power Pack" framework coordinates three specialized AI campaigns: Demand Gen to build awareness, AI Max for Search to discover and capture new intent, and Performance Max to efficiently drive final conversions. In practice, this means assigning each campaign type a distinct job and monitoring for overlap. Practical guardrails:

• Use Demand Gen for prospecting and mid-funnel engagement with new audiences
• Reserve PMax for proven products with strong conversion data

Use Demand Gen campaigns to test unique creative assets and gain deeper insights into creative performance, then apply those learnings to PMax campaigns.

• Monitor the Attributed Branded Searches metric (more on this below) to quantify how Demand Gen feeds your bottom-funnel campaigns

Google's December 2025 data showed that on average, 68% of Demand Gen conversions come from users who had not seen the brand's Google Search ads in the prior 30 days-directly addressing the skepticism about whether Demand Gen cannibalizes Search traffic. This is the strongest evidence that a well-run Demand Gen campaign adds incremental reach rather than reshuffling existing conversions.

Measurement: Moving Beyond Last-Click Attribution

Here's where most Demand Gen campaigns fail-not in execution, but in evaluation. Most advertisers don't fail at Demand Gen execution-they fail because they measure it incorrectly and give up too early, which is the number one reason why advertisers avoid Demand Gen entirely.

The Metrics That Matter

Stop comparing Demand Gen CPA to your Search CPA. Compare metrics to paid social benchmarks rather than Search benchmarks, since Demand Gen competes in the same space as Meta and TikTok advertising.

The important measures are view-through conversions, assisted conversions, brand lift, and attributed branded searches-a new metric available since January 2026 that directly shows how many branded searches your Demand Gen campaigns generate.

Attributed Branded Searches: The Game-Changer

The introduction of Attributed Branded Searches changes the conversation-this metric explicitly tracks the volume of branded searches on Google and YouTube that occur after a user sees a Demand Gen ad.

Attributed Branded Searches is now available for Demand Gen-reach out to your Google representative to activate.

This metric solves the CFO problem. For years, the biggest friction in scaling ad spend has been the inability to prove that a video view today causes a branded search tomorrow-CFOs hate view-through conversions because they look like free credit, and consequently, brands cut upper-funnel spend. Attributed Branded Searches makes the connection between Demand Gen exposure and downstream search behavior visible and reportable.

Platform Comparable Conversions

Normally, Google's data-driven attribution spreads conversion credit across all your Google campaigns, but the Platform Comparable column removes other Google campaigns from the attribution path and gives full credit to the last Demand Gen touchpoint. This levels the playing field when you're comparing Demand Gen performance against Meta or TikTok campaigns that use more generous attribution windows.

Putting It All Together: A 90-Day Launch Framework

The mistake most teams make is treating Demand Gen like a switch they can flip and judge in two weeks. Early Demand Gen results won't reflect long-term impact-brand awareness needs time to take hold with users, so give campaigns 60 to 90 days to stabilize and begin compounding.

Weeks 1-2: Foundation Launch your remarketing campaign first with video + product feed ads. This builds initial conversion data and validates your creative assets against warm audiences. Set bidding to Maximize Conversions without a target. Weeks 3-4: Expand Launch your prospecting campaign using narrow lookalike audiences. Use the same video + product feed structure. Don't touch the remarketing campaign-let it continue learning. Weeks 5-8: Optimize Review asset-level performance. Click-through rates in asset reports identify your top-performing assets-swap out lower performers with new variations, then review segment-by-ad-format reporting to diagnose how your ads perform across YouTube Shorts, In-stream, and In-feed. Shift budget toward the ad groups and formats generating the best results. Weeks 9-12: Scale Add target ROAS or target CPA once you have 50+ conversions per campaign. Expand lookalike audiences from narrow to balanced. Test new creative variations using Demand Gen A/B experiments, which allow advertisers to test the effectiveness of cross-channel creative in a clean experiment environment with randomly assigned, isolated user groups.

Throughout this process, track your total account performance-not just the Demand Gen campaign in isolation. Don't evaluate Demand Gen in isolation-if your total account ROAS is improving, conversion volume is up, and cost per acquisition across all channels is stable or declining, Demand Gen is working, even if the individual campaign numbers look mediocre.

--- Demand Gen is no longer the tentative upper-funnel experiment it was in 2023. Advertisers that adopted at least 3 of the 4 Demand Gen Campaign Best Practices saw on average over 40% more conversions. Those four pillars-audiences, bidding, creative, and data strength-compound when they work together. The specific combination of video and shopping assets isn't a nice-to-have. It's how you unlock the full placement inventory, from Shorts to CTV to Discover, while giving the algorithm the creative variety it needs to optimize effectively. Build your campaigns with separate remarketing and prospecting structures. Invest in native-format video. Optimize your product feed like a creative asset. And measure results against paid social benchmarks, not Search.

Budget size matters less than structure, intent, and input quality. Get the architecture right, and Demand Gen becomes the campaign type that feeds every other campaign in your account.