Google Demand Gen campaigns haven’t been around for that long, and they’re already rolling out new features that are changing the game. These new features, particularly product data feed integration, give advertisers even more tools to boost engagement and conversions.
With all these new capabilities, here’s your guide to mastering demand gen specs and best practices so you can confidently set up campaigns that perform across all Google channels.
Understanding Demand Gen Basics
Before diving into the nitty-gritty of ad formats and product feeds, it’s essential to grasp the basics of Google Demand Gen. At its core, a Google demand gen campaign is designed to drive key business objectives: whether that’s increasing sales, boosting website traffic, or elevating product and brand consideration.
Demand Gen ads now appear in diverse ad surfaces like YouTube (including Shorts, in-feed placements, Home feed, Watch Next, and Search), Discover, Gmail, and across Google video partner sites. This expansive reach makes Demand Gen a natural fit for advertisers already succeeding with visually appealing, multi-format ads on social platforms.
Demand Gen vs PMax ads
Don’t go thinking Demand Gen and PMax are the same thing. They’re two distinct campaign types designed to address different stages of the customer journey. Demand Gen is geared toward building brand awareness and engaging users higher up in the funnel. It offers advertisers greater control, allowing manual selection of placements and creative assets, particularly on platforms like YouTube, Discovery Feed, Gmail, and other video channels.
On the other hand, PMax campaigns are more automated and focus on driving conversions at the bottom of the funnel. They cover a broader range of placements, including Search, Shopping, and Display, leveraging Google's machine learning to optimize ad delivery based on audience signals. While PMax provides a full-funnel reach with less manual tweaking, combining it with Demand Gen can create a balanced strategy that targets both awareness and conversion effectively.
Exploring Demand Gen Specs and Ad Formats
When planning your campaigns, it’s important to understand the specific ad formats and their requirements. Here are the demand gen specs for the ads we’ve been using up until now.
Single-Image Ads
These are your classic Google ads, consisting of a single image, coupled with a brief headline (maximum 40 characters), some short description copy (maximum 90 characters), and your business name (maximum 25 characters). You can add a custom CTA, but Google recommends choosing from the ‘automated’ option.
Best practices
Use high-quality brand imagery with inspirational visuals, minimal text, and excellent lighting. If an asset performs well, make sure you repurpose it. Repurpose top-performing assets.
Ad strength
Always check your ad strength using Google’s tool to ensure your images are optimized for every placement.
Video Ads
These are your video ads that appear in ad placements for YouTube. Beyond the video itself, you’ll include a brief headline (maximum 40 characters), some short description copy (maximum 90 characters), and your business name (maximum 25 characters), similar to the single-image ads. For this one, you will need a custom CTA, which cannot be more than 10 characters.
Formats
Google Demand Gen supports landscape, square, and vertical formats. Vertical video, particularly in the 9:16 aspect ratio, is recommended for YouTube Shorts.
YouTube channel
You can choose to upload videos either to your dedicated video ad storage channel or your personal brand channel.
Video settings
Adjust your videos’ colors, fonts, music, and voice-over settings to align with your brand’s tone.
Enhancements (new in 2025)
New this year, you can utilize automatic video enhancements that create shorter, dynamic clips and adapt aspect ratios to various placements.
Carousel Ads
These ads allow you to present multiple images, which makes them useful to tell a story, showcase different products or services, or show off different aspects of a single product. Copy for these ads consists of just a headline (40 characters max) and the CTA, for which Google recommends using an auto-generated one.
Components
These include a headline, description, final URL, business name, call to action (CTA), logo (recommended at 1:1), and between 2 to 10 image cards.
Image card aspect ratios
Supported ratios include landscape (1.91:1), portrait (4:5), and square (1:1).
Leveraging Product Feeds (New in 2025)
One of the most exciting updates for Demand Gen in 2025 is the enhanced integration with Google Merchant Center (GMC). This allows you to include product feeds directly in your ads, reducing the number of steps your audience needs to take them from awareness to purchasing in your funnel.
Here’s your checklist for setting up your Google Demand Gen Product ads with integrated product feeds, along with the necessary demand gen specs.
Setup
Prerequisites- Set up your GMC account and create a product feed (approval may take up to 3 days).
- Enable Shopping ads as a marketing method in GMC.
- Use square (1:1) images for optimal ad coverage.
Connect GMC
Link your GMC account to your Google Ads account.
Enable a Product Feed Campaign
When setting up your campaign, toggle the “Purchase” option.
Product filters/listing groups
Use Listing Group criteria or custom product filters to include only products that match your campaign goals.
Have a large number of products
Include at least 4 eligible products—though 50 or more can lead to superior performance.
Location targeting
Align your campaign’s geographic settings with the locations specified in GMC.
Feed labels
Utilize feed labels to classify your product data by country. For feeds with similar items, use the item_group_id attribute to avoid duplicate images, and leverage the short_title attribute for catchy, concise product ad titles.
Dynamic Product Ads
Consider using dynamic product ads to further enhance performance.
Demand Gen Specs
- Ad types:
- Image and product ads (Recommended): Combines product imagery with fallback images when needed. Use a square logo (1:1), ideally sized at 1200 x 1200 pixels.
- Video and product ads (Recommended): Enhances reach on YouTube by integrating video content across landscape, square, and vertical formats.
- Product only ads: Focuses solely on product details with a single headline, description, and business name.
- Image and product ads (Recommended): Combines product imagery with fallback images when needed. Use a square logo (1:1), ideally sized at 1200 x 1200 pixels.
- Required fields: Every ad should include a headline, description, logo image, and your business name.
- Copy and CTA: Incorporate ad-level text assets like catchy headlines and compelling descriptions (e.g., “Free shipping on all products” or “10% off storewide”) along with an automated CTA.
- Sitelinks and path fields: Add at least four (up to 20) sitelinks and use display URL path fields (up to 15 characters each) to clarify the landing page.
- Additional GMC features: For feeds with similar items, use the item_group_id attribute to avoid duplicate images, and leverage the short_title attribute for catchy, concise product ad titles.
Utilizing New 2025 Demand Gen Features
Google’s 2025 rollout introduces several powerful tools and enhancements to elevate your Demand Gen campaigns.
Expanded channel controls
Google’s latest Demand Gen update introduces expanded channel controls that let you fine-tune where your ads appear. Now, you can handpick placements across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail while even targeting YouTube Shorts specifically for that engaging vertical video experience.
These controls, managed at the ad group level, not only simplify placement decisions but also extend your reach through the Google Display Network with the help of sophisticated AI optimization. This means your campaigns can become more responsive and better targeted than ever before, ensuring that your ads reach the right audience at the right time.
Local offers with product feeds
One of the most exciting features in this rollout is local offers with Product Feeds. This tool allows you to showcase real-time product availability directly in your ads, effectively bridging the gap between online engagement and in-store visits. You can connect digital shoppers with nearby physical stores to drive localized traffic and create a more integrated shopping experience.
Omnichannel bidding (For retailers)
For retailers aiming to maximize conversions both online and in-store, the new Omnichannel Bidding feature is a game-changer. This tool leverages AI-powered bidding strategies that dynamically optimize for various customer touchpoints, ensuring that every interaction, whether it’s on a digital platform or in a brick-and-mortar store, contributes to your overall conversion goals. This feature helps maintain a consistent strategy that aligns with your broader business objectives.
New reporting columns
Keeping track of your campaign’s performance is essential, and Google’s new reporting columns offer deeper insights into your Demand Gen efforts. These columns allow you to separately track view-through conversions, allowing for more effective data extraction, giving you a clearer picture of how your ads influence user behavior even when they aren’t directly clicked.
Additionally, you can isolate Demand Gen performance from other campaigns, making it easier to adjust budgets and strategies based on real-time data.
Streamlined workflows
Alongside these feature updates, Google has refined the ad creation process to boost team collaboration and efficiency. The new streamlined workflow offers customizable, shareable previews that simplify how you develop and fine-tune your ads, allowing for integration with your developer-led projects, like localising your product feeds. This collaborative environment not only accelerates the creation process but also ensures that every team member is on the same page, ultimately leading to campaigns that are both visually compelling and strategically sound.
Optimizations and best practices
With these new features and checklists of demand gen specs in hand, here are some final optimizations and best practices to take away so you can truly master Google Demand Gen and its new features.
Creative strategy
When it comes to creative strategy, it’s all about telling your brand story in a way that captivates your audience. Emphasizing video ads in both landscape and portrait formats, especially on platforms like YouTube and YouTube Shorts, can significantly boost engagement. Experimenting with different creative themes within a single campaign not only adds variety but also provides valuable insights into what resonates most with your audience.
Clearly label each variant so you can track performance more effectively and continuously refine your approach to create visually appealing and effective ads.
Bidding strategy
A smart bidding strategy is essential for optimizing campaign performance. Many advertisers start with a Maximize Conversions approach to gather initial data, usually aiming for around 30–50 conversions, before transitioning to a Target CPA model that fine-tunes costs.
Alternatively, if your primary goal is to drive site visits, considering a Max Clicks strategy might be the way to go. With AI-powered tools now more accessible than ever, these strategies can be continuously optimized to achieve the best possible results, ensuring that every dollar you spend drives value.
Audience targeting
Effectively reaching your ideal audience is crucial, and the latest features offer enhanced tools for precise targeting. Utilizing lookalike segments helps you find new users who resemble your best customers, while custom audience insights allow you to craft tailored segments for both cold traffic and retargeting campaigns.
This targeted approach not only improves engagement but also ensures that your messaging stays relevant across different audience groups, leading to more efficient budget utilization and better overall campaign performance.
Measurement and reporting
With the introduction of new reporting columns, measuring campaign success has never been more straightforward. These tools let you monitor upper-funnel metrics such as engagement and video views, providing a comprehensive view of your ad performance.
Additionally, tracking view-through conversions offers insights into how your ads influence users even without direct interactions. This detailed data is invaluable for refining your strategy and ensuring that your ad spend is generating meaningful results.
Budget and timing
Timing and budgeting play a critical role in campaign success. It’s advisable to publish your campaigns within two working days to capitalize on current trends and market dynamics. Allowing a ramp-up period of one to two weeks for new product feed campaigns can help smooth out performance fluctuations before you make any major bid or budget changes.
Setting realistic expectations is key, especially for top-of-funnel initiatives, as it may take some time before you see significant returns on investment.
Conclusion
Google Demand Gen campaigns are powerful tools that are evolving with new features, particularly highlighted by the 2025 updates. These updates, like enhanced product feed integration, allow advertisers to more effectively increase sales and boost engagement across diverse placements like YouTube and Discover.