Demand gen campaigns in DV 360

In recent times, no campaign type has received attention, updates, and development as much as the Demand Gem campaign. In this blog, we are going to talk about the Demand Gen campaign in detail, as well as its benefits and features. We will take a closer look at how we can use DV360 to run a demand gen campaign, as we know this campaign can only also be run and managed in Google ads. We are also going to look at the implementation and reporting best practices that we recommend when advertisers start using Demand Gen.

Google recently announced that advertisers can now run and manage demand gen campaigns in DV 360. This will allow us to run campaigns and their line items with Floodlight optimization across Advertisers’ YouTube and Google’s most immersive and visually appealing touch points, driving great performance. It now allows us to optimize for performance based on cross-channel conversions with a unified experience through floodlight measurement.

Benefits of Demand Gen

Demand Gen leverages all the strengths of Advertiser’s Tube Video Action Campaigns and extends reach across Google’s most engaging platforms. It combines video and image creatives with audience targeting to drive traffic and actions through a customer’s journey. Demand Gen offers diverse creative formats, including different aspect ratios, single image carousels, and product feeds, delivering a more immersive ad experience.

Bidding and Audience Strategies

Based on our goal, the Demand Gen campaign offers different bidding strategies: maximized clicks, Target CPA, and value-based bidding. On the audience front, this campaign type provides an array of audience controls and creatives to drive deeper connections across different surfaces. These features provide various options to create high-value audiences, which could be unique to every business, including lookalike audiences; at the same time, different audience options allow advertisers to create more engaging and personalized ad experiences for consumers.

Reporting Features

New reporting features allow advertisers to drill down to more granular levels, segmenting by campaign type, ad group, and asset type to hone in on what’s performing best. Demand Gen campaigns were launched to the public last October 2024, and since then, this campaign has delivered great results, such as DoorDash achieving a 15x higher conversion rate and 50% more efficient CPA.

Why to run demand gen in DV 360

One of the key benefits of running campaign in DV 360 is that advertisers can uniquely drive performance and operational efficiency with a unified media management and measurement solution. Using DV360, can unlock true cross-channel performance by optimizing to de-duplicated conversions measured by Campaign manager 360 floodlights. This allows Advertiser’s to inform bid optimization and broader audience learnings. DV360 helps manage frequency exposure across all formats, minimizing user fatigue and wastage.

DV360 boosts productivity with centralized management, driving workflow gains through unified management workflows and features specific to agencies, such as automated click tracking. The floodlight tag enables optimization to de-duplicated conversion attribution across all paid media, supporting all conversion and tag types.

Google has seen advertisers succeed with streamlined activation using floodlight optimization, such as Sky TV and Dream 11, enhancing video performance and driving higher acquisition on video action campaigns.
Demand gen campaigns are very AI-driven, and that is one reason why they work so well across different objectives. One best practice is to allow this campaign to run for at least 2 weeks or have 50+ conversions.

Once you decide to run the campaign in DV360, please make sure to enable floodlight optimization for the Advertiser’s YouTube and Demand Gen line items. Use floodlight reports to evaluate campaign performance. Use both video and image ads, with horizontal and vertical videos. For audience targeting, utilize lookalike audiences and optimized targeting, planning for a five—to six-week test including the learning period.

Questions

You can generate ad previews for static ads as early as 2025

1. Can you get Ad Previews – You can generate ad previews for static ads as early as 2025.
2. Can you apply brand safety? You can apply and use brand safety levers throughout the campaign.
3. Difference between Google Ads vs. DV360 – DV360 offers enhanced performance through floodlight optimization, allowing us to manage ad frequency across formats.
4. Video Partners – Advertisers can opt in or out of Google Video Partners within Demand Gen and DV360.
5. Can advertisers only run on YouTube – Advertisers can’t exclude any surfaces in Demand Gen.
6. Can we run Image Ads Only? We can; however, running image-only ads will limit scale; the best practice is to use both video and images.