What a good Demand Gen campaign looks like

Most people who walk into a bookshop aren’t looking for a particular book. They pick one up, read the back, put it down, and sometimes come back for it a week later.

A lot of time online works the same way.

Demand Gen is built for the browsing part.

Demand Gen campaigns show image and video ads to people while they scroll and watch on YouTube, Discover and Gmail, often before they’ve started searching. A good one reaches people who look like your real customers, with ads made for each place they appear, and is judged on what it leads to rather than how often it’s seen. Most of that starts with how the audiences are built.

What a good Demand Gen campaign has in common

• The audiences look like the people who already buy.
• The ads hold attention in a busy feed.
• Each ad suits the place it shows.
• It’s judged on what it leads to.
• The numbers match what the business sees.

Audiences built from real customers

Demand Gen doesn’t wait for someone to type a search. It decides who to show ads to based on the audiences behind the campaign.

In a strong account, those audiences start with the people who already buy from the business, and grow outwards from there. The campaign is looking for more people like the best customers, not simply more people.

A quick way to see this is to ask where each audience came from. The best answers point back to the business’s own customers and visitors.

Ads that hold attention

Demand Gen ads sit between videos, emails and articles that people actually chose to look at. The ad has a moment to earn a second look.

The ones that work are clear at a glance. The product or service is obvious, the image or video looks at home in the feed, and the viewer knows who it’s from before they scroll on. They also get refreshed, so the same people aren’t seeing the same ad for months.

Looking at results by ad, side by side, usually shows which ones people stop for.

Made for each place it shows

YouTube, Shorts, Discover and Gmail are different places. A wide video, an upright video and a still image each suit some of them better than others.

In a well-run campaign, the ads are made with those places in mind. Upright video for Shorts, clean images for Discover and Gmail, and wider video for YouTube. Nothing is cropped awkwardly or shrunk to fit.

Scrolling through the ad previews on a phone is the simplest check. Each one should look like it belongs where it’s shown.

Judged on what it leads to

Someone who sees a Demand Gen ad is often still browsing. They might visit the site that day, or come back a week later through a search.

A good campaign is measured with that in mind. It looks past views and clicks to what happens afterwards, and gives the campaign enough time to show it, much like a YouTube campaign.

Comparing searches for the business’s name, and new visitors to the site, in the weeks the campaign ran is a good place to look.

Numbers that match the business

Demand Gen reports its own results, and so does every other channel. When they’re added up, the same sale can be claimed more than once.

In a healthy account, the enquiries and sales the campaign reports line up with what the business actually sees. What’s counted as a result is something the business would count too.

Putting the campaign’s figures next to the business’s own enquiries or orders for the same weeks is the clearest test.

Where to start

Look at the campaign the way a customer would. Scroll through the places it shows on a phone, see which ads you’d stop for, then compare that with what came in over the same weeks.

That’s also where a review starts.

If you’d like us to look at yours, request a review, or read more about Demand Gen campaigns.