Google Demand Gen: how it differs from Performance Max and how to set it up

Google Demand Gen is Google Ads' social-style campaign type that runs image and video creative across YouTube (including Shorts), Discover, Gmail, Maps, and the Google Display Network, with Google's own figures citing up to 3 billion monthly users and more than 50 billion daily Shorts views. If you are used to Performance Max, treat Demand Gen as the controllable sibling, and see the Performance Max comparison for the automation side of the picture.

What Demand Gen is, where it serves, and what it replaced

Demand Gen campaigns are goal-based campaigns in Google Ads that capture engagement and action across YouTube (including Shorts), Discover, Gmail, Maps, and the Google Display Network, according to Google’s help documentation. This is Google’s consolidated surface for social-style placements, with a single campaign type that can reach users across these feeds and surfaces.

The lineage matters for migration planning. Google announced Demand Gen in October 2023 as the next generation of Discovery campaigns, and any Discovery campaigns that were not manually upgraded were automatically migrated on January 22, 2024. Separately, Video Action Campaigns were upgraded into Demand Gen in 2025, so video-first performance inventory that used to live in Video Action now lives inside Demand Gen.

A common misconception is that Demand Gen replaced only Discovery. Google’s documentation makes clear that it also absorbed Video Action Campaigns in 2025 and is absorbing Display in 2026, so Demand Gen is the consolidation point for Google’s social-style inventory. Another misconception is that Display campaigns are unaffected by Demand Gen, but Google states that Display is moving into Demand Gen starting June 2026, with existing Display campaigns migrating into this new home.

How Demand Gen differs from Performance Max

Google’s own comparison table positions Performance Max as the all-channel, goal-focused campaign that finds converting customers across all Google channels with no hard audience targeting. In contrast, the same table describes Demand Gen as a social-like buying flow that offers hard audience targeting, including lookalike segments, and more control over creative testing and placements.

Per Google’s comparison, Performance Max uses audience signals as soft hints and does not allow you to restrict delivery to specific audiences, while Demand Gen lets you target specific audience segments, including lookalikes, as hard constraints. Demand Gen also includes native creative A/B experiments and supports Brand Lift, Search Lift, and Conversion Lift measurement, which are not part of the Performance Max feature set described in that table.

Another key difference is channel coverage. Performance Max can serve on Google Search results, while Google’s comparison explicitly states that Demand Gen does not serve on Google Search results. A frequent misconception is that Demand Gen is just Performance Max with different branding, but Google’s own table draws a clear line: Demand Gen has hard audience targeting, channel selection, A/B experiments, and clicks bidding, while Performance Max has none of those and instead focuses on cross-channel automation.

Supported formats and creative specifications

Demand Gen supports several creative formats that you configure at the asset group level. Google’s help pages list image ads, video ads, carousel ads, product feeds from Merchant Center, and promotion assets for YouTube Shorts and In-stream in feed campaigns.

Image ads support multiple aspect ratios: 1.91:1, 4:5, and 1:1, plus a 1:1 logo. Video ads support landscape, portrait, square, and vertical formats, with a minimum length of 5 seconds. Google specifies that videos under 10 seconds are ineligible for YouTube In-stream, even though the minimum is 5 seconds, so “any video length works everywhere” is a misconception.

Carousel ads can include 2 to 10 image cards. Product feeds connect from Merchant Center so that Demand Gen can show product-based creatives across eligible placements. Promotion assets can be attached for YouTube Shorts and In-stream in feed campaigns to highlight offers.

Text assets have specific minimums. Google’s asset specifications call for at least 3 unique headlines of up to 40 characters, 3 long headlines of up to 90 characters, and 3 descriptions of up to 90 characters. Google also notes that image-only or video-only campaigns can run, but using both image and video assets typically yields better performance.

Ad Strength in Demand Gen depends on coverage across aspect ratios. Google states that a “Good” rating requires full coverage of all 3 aspect ratios for both videos and images, and “Excellent” requires 3 of each format. One horizontal video with video enhancements can reach “Good” because Google can auto-generate square and vertical versions from it.

How lookalike segments work and how they change through 2026

Demand Gen supports lookalike segments that are built from first-party seed lists. Google’s documentation lists customer lists, website or app visitors, and YouTube engagers as valid seed types, and you can include up to 10 seed lists in a single lookalike segment. New lookalike segments take about 72 hours to populate.

Lookalikes have 3 reach settings. Google defines narrow reach at about 2.5% of users in the target location, balanced at about 5%, and broad at about 10%. These percentages describe how large the modeled audience will be relative to the geographic targeting you set in the campaign.

Historically, lookalike audiences were treated as strict targeting, but Google is changing that. Google’s help pages explain that through a phased approach throughout 2026, starting March 2026, lookalikes in Demand Gen are moving into a suggestion mode where the seed list becomes a signal rather than a constraint. This transition removes the former 100-user seed minimum, and Google provides an opt-out form and later UI opt-out controls for advertisers who want to keep stricter behavior.

This means the misconception “lookalike audiences work like they always did” is no longer accurate. Through 2026, the system increasingly treats your lookalike seed as guidance for who to find, not as a hard fence around who can see your ads.

Channel controls and practical setup steps

Demand Gen provides channel controls at the ad group level. Google expanded these controls in March 2025 to all Demand Gen surfaces globally as a beta, with a “Let me choose” option that lets you select YouTube (In-stream, in-feed, Shorts), Discover, Gmail, Maps, or the Display Network per ad group. Maps inventory requires a non-affiliated location asset attached to the campaign.

To set up a Demand Gen campaign with channel controls, you follow this general sequence in the Google Ads UI:

• Create a new campaign and select a goal that is compatible with Demand Gen.
• Choose “Demand Gen” as the campaign type.
• Configure locations, languages, and bidding strategy (Clicks, Conversions, or Conversion Value).
• Set your daily budget and, if using a target-based strategy, your target CPA or target ROAS.
• Create at least one ad group, then in the channel section choose “Let me choose” to pick YouTube (and its subtypes), Discover, Gmail, Maps, and/or Display Network.
• Attach required assets: at least 3 headlines, 3 long headlines, 3 descriptions, images in 1.91:1, 4:5, and 1:1, logos, and 1 to 5 videos that meet the length and size specs.
• Add audience targeting, including any lookalike segments you want to use as hard targeting (subject to the 2026 suggestion-mode transition).
• Review Ad Strength and fill missing aspect ratios or text fields until you reach at least “Good.”

Brand safety is handled primarily at the account level. Google’s Demand Gen documentation notes that core content suitability settings live at the account level, and sensitive categories are generally restricted to YouTube inventory. Google also states that alcohol advertisers are prohibited from using product feeds in Demand Gen.

Bidding strategies and budget guidance for tCPA

Demand Gen supports 3 bidding options. Google’s help pages list Clicks (Maximize clicks, typically for consideration goals), Conversions, and Conversion Value. This gives Demand Gen one more option than Performance Max, which only supports conversions and conversion value bidding in the comparison Google provides.

For value-based bidding, Google documents a volume requirement for Target ROAS (tROAS) in Demand Gen. The guidance is that tROAS on Demand Gen works best when you have 50 conversions in the past 35 days (with at least 10 in the past 7 days), or 100 conversions across all Demand Gen campaigns. For more detail on Smart Bidding mechanics beyond Demand Gen, see the Smart Bidding reference.

For Target CPA (tCPA), Google gives explicit budget guidance. The recommendation is to set a daily budget at least 10 times your target CPA for Demand Gen campaigns that use tCPA. This ratio is meant to give the bidding system enough room to find and optimize toward your target cost per acquisition.

Display migration into Demand Gen and what happens to Display campaigns

Google is moving Display campaigns into Demand Gen. According to Google’s help documentation, from June 2026 eligible advertisers can voluntarily migrate existing Display campaigns into Demand Gen, where the Google Display Network becomes one of the selectable channels.

Google further states that later in the rollout, new campaigns can only be created within Demand Gen, and remaining Display campaigns will be automatically migrated. This directly contradicts the misconception that Display campaigns are unaffected by Demand Gen. In practice, this means your Display strategy, creative, and budgets will be managed through Demand Gen, using the same asset groups, audience targeting, and channel controls described above.

TF's lens on Demand Gen is the coverage delineation: video does particularly well on Google when you leverage Google's syndication across all its properties, that gives the most coverage on the Google side, but TF explicitly delineates this from social, where social simply has better coverage for multimedia and multi-surface placement. Demand Gen is Google's social-style surface, and the fair way to evaluate it is as Google's answer to that gap, judged the same way TF judges everything: ROAS from conversion volume, read weekly. For clients with strong video assets, the asset-contingent logic from PMax applies here too, great creative is the precondition, not a nice-to-have.