Google just borrowed from Meta's playbook and it changes everything about mid-funnel advertising
Demand Gen campaigns didn't get a flashy launch. No keynote moment. But quietly, they represent the most significant structural shift in Google Ads in years and the brands that figure this out first will have a real edge.
What Demand Gen actually is (and where it runs)
Demand Gen campaigns live entirely within Google's own properties YouTube, the Discover feed, and Gmail. That distinction matters more than it sounds, and we'll come back to it.
They support videos (landscape and vertical), single images, and for the first time in Google Ads history carousel ads. The campaign structure is built around three outcome goals:
Conversions, conversion value, or clicks. Notice what's missing: there's no view goal, no impression goal. This isn't a brand awareness tool it's a demand creation machine aimed squarely at the middle and upper-mid of your funnel.
The real story: first-party data finally has a home
Cookie deprecation has been looming for years. What it actually means in practice is that retargeting on the open web display networks, third-party publishers becomes increasingly unreliable. The problem isn't your audience list. It's where you're trying to use it.
Demand Gen sidesteps this entirely. YouTube, Gmail, and Discover all operate within Google's logged-in ecosystem. When you upload a customer email list, Google matches it to real accounts at scale. No cookies needed. Your first-party data stays sharp.
Lookalike audiences: finally on Google
Social advertisers have used lookalikes for a decade. Google had its own version similar audiences, audience expansion but they never quite hit the same way. With Demand Gen, Google is calling it what it is: Lookalike, with three levels of expansion you control directly.
Rule of thumb: If your seed audience is under 100k users, go broad and let the system work. Above that, experiment with all three levels and toggle optimised targeting on and off to find your sweet spot.
Carousel ads: a genuine first for Google Ads
Google has never supported carousel ads until now. Each carousel in Demand Gen supports up to 10 cards, each with its own image, headline, and destination URL. Here's what one looks like in the wild:
Demand
A real Demand Gen carousel ad running on YouTube/Discover. Each card links to a different article.
In practice, carousels currently receive less delivery than video and image ads within the same campaign. That said, they open up creative possibilities especially for publishers, e-commerce brands, and anyone with a strong product catalogue and they're new enough that the landscape isn't crowded yet.
The UI overhaul: it's giving Meta Ads Manager
The campaign creation flow has been rebuilt from scratch. The new left-hand navigation lets you move between campaign, ad group, and ad level without losing your place — a deliberate departure from the old back-and-forth. If you've spent time in Meta Ads Manager, you'll feel at home immediately.
4 things to do when you launch your first Demand Gen campaign
Quick-start checklist
Start with your CRM list. Connect HubSpot or Salesforce directly to Google Ads so your audience stays synced automatically. Manual uploads work, but an automated connection is always cleaner.
Add a lookalike on top. Use your best-converting segment as the seed. If that list is under 100k, go broad (10%) from the start.
Match your goal to your strategy. Clicks and conversions produce very different bidding behaviour. Know which one you actually need before you set it.
Upload every creative format you have. Landscape video, vertical video, short-form, long-form, images, carousels. The system will find the winner but only if you give it options.
Demand Gen is Google's clearest signal yet: the future of its ad platform is first-party, AI-driven, and social-inspired. The features launching here lookalikes, carousels, a rebuilt UI will almost certainly spread to other campaign types over time. The advertisers experimenting with this now are building an advantage that compounds.
It's a good time to run the test.
If you’re spending $30K–$500K/month on Google Ads and want to scale without quietly stressing the system, we offer a focused scale-readiness review to identify what can be pushed and what shouldn’t.
Patrick
CEO, Ad-Lab