Google has announced new updates to its Demand Gen advertising platform to help businesses create more engaging visual content and better measure its performance against social media campaigns. These changes include expanded controls over ad placement, enhanced creative tools, and a timeline to retire certain ad campaign formats. Starting in March, advertisers will have more precise control over where their ads appear across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail, including the ability to specifically target YouTube Shorts.
Google Display inventory will also be added to Demand Gen, allowing advertisers to reach over 90% of the global internet population. Creative enhancements are also coming, such as vertical 9:16 image ads for Shorts in late February, a new tool to create shorter versions of videos at scale, and an improved ad creation workflow with shareable previews.
New updates enhance Google Demand Gen
For retailers, Google is introducing enhanced product feed integration, local inventory display capabilities, and omnichannel bidding for both online and in-store optimization. According to Google data, YouTube delivers 2.3x higher long-term return on ad spend compared to paid social media, and 61% of Gen Z users feel closer to YouTube creators than those on other platforms. A case study revealed that global clothing and homeware retailer Marks & Spencer exceeded forecasted ROAS by 186% with 66% lower CPA using Demand Gen.
Advertisers will no longer be able to create new Video Action Campaigns starting in April and are encouraged to upgrade manually to Demand Gen before the automatic upgrade in July. These enhanced controls and creative tools aim to help advertisers efficiently create and optimize content across multiple platforms without needing to rebuild campaigns from scratch. The strong Demand Gen return on ad spend compared to paid social, along with features like local inventory integration, allows for better connection between online and offline presence, yielding better performance for investments.