Create a Demand Gen campaign

Before you begin

Prepare the following items before you create your Demand Gen campaign:

Assets: Gather high quality images, video, ad text and messaging from other platforms, such as email or social media.
Conversion tracking: Set up conversion tracking and make sure that the Google tag is working properly.
Budget requirements: Set up high budgeting limits (for example, 15x for target CPA).

Instructions

Step 1: Create a new campaign

You can create a new campaign or duplicate an existing campaign.

Sign in to your Search Ads 360 experience.
Navigate to a Google Ads client account.
Click Campaignsin the left page menu.
Click the blue plus icon .
Choose your campaign objective from the available cards. The goal you select should align with what you want to achieve with your campaign. For example, if you want to encourage people to visit your website, you may want to select “Website traffic”. If you don’t want to select a campaign objective at this time, click Create a campaign without a goal's guidance.
Note: The “App promotion” and “Local store visits and promotions” campaign objectives don’t support the Demand Gen campaign type.
Select the campaign type, click Demand Gen from the given cards, and click Continue.
On the “Demand Gen” page, enter the campaign name.
To use a product feed to show your products in your ads:
- Click Run a product feed campaign to enable a product feed.
- Select a linked merchant account.

You must have linked merchant accounts to use this setting.

Step 2: Choose a campaign goal

Select one of the campaign goals.
Follow the instructions for the campaign goal you have selected.
Optional: If you select “Conversion goals” as the “Campaign goals”, you can choose from the list of Floodlight conversion goals.

Step 3: Configure your bidding strategy settings

If you select Conversions as your goal, the Demand Gen campaign will aim to maximize your conversions. You can set an optional target cost per action (Target CPA) to optimize the ads for getting conversions at a specific cost per conversion. If you select Conversion value and set a bid in the space underneath, your campaign will be set to Target ROAS bidding. Your ad groups will use your campaign level target CPA or target ROAS by default, and you can set a target for each of your ad groups. If you select Clicks your bidding strategy will be set to Maximize clicks.

Step 4: Set up budget and dates

Your budget and dates influence how often your ads show and how prominently they’re featured.

Enter your campaign budget. You can choose a daily budget or the average amount you want to spend each day, which we recommend to be 15x your expected daily average CPA.
Set a start date and end date for your campaign. The dates are required if you use a campaign total budget.

If your campaign spends the budget fully, either reaching the daily limit for daily budgets or the average per day budget for campaign total budgets, think about increasing your budget to scale your success. If not, adjust your targeting, bidding, and ads to check if your campaign performs better.

Step 5: Set up campaign-level targeting

Select one of the following targets:

Language and location targeting. Enable the languages your customers speak and the locations you want to target. Learn how to Target ads to geographic locations and About language targeting targeting.

Follow the steps below to enable campaign-level language and location targeting:

Scroll down the page to the “Location and Language” section.
Click to Enable campaign level location and language targeting.
Select the location and language for your campaign.

Note: You won’t be able to change the language and location targeting back to ad group level after publishing the campaign. Language and location can only be defined at campaign level or ad group level.

Device targeting.
Device targeting allows you to target your ads to people based on the device they're using. Learn more About device targeting. For Demand Gen campaigns, device targeting can be set at the campaign level.

In the “Devices” section, choose one of the following options:
- Show on all eligible devices (computers, mobile, tablet, and TV screens). Showing ads on all devices helps expand your reach.
- Set specific targeting for devices. Select the devices you want to target. Set “Advanced targeting for mobile phones and tablets” for more specific details, such as operating system, device model, or networks. If you don’t select the advanced options, then all options will apply.

Step 6: Set up the ad schedule

Schedule your ads to specific days, and time intervals. You can add several ad schedules.

Select a specific day, range of days or all days.
Select the start and end time.

Keep in mind that your ads will only run during these times.

Step 7: Select campaign URL options

Enter the URLs for your Demand Gen campaign:

Tracking template.

Example: https://trackingtemplate.foo/?url={lpurl}&id=5
Final URL suffix

Example: param1=value1&param2=value2
Custom parameters. You can define one or more custom parameters in your final URL and tracking template.

Example: {_Name } = Value

Step 8: Create your Ad group

Follow these steps to create your Ad group:

At the bottom of the page, click Go to Ad group 1. Each section of the Demand Gen process appears on the left navigation panel.
Enter the Ad group name.
Follow the instructions that are displayed for your Ad group. Options that may appear include:
- Product group (available if you enabled product feeds and linked to merchant accounts on the Demand Gen page).
- Location and language.
- Existing audience or new audience with the audience builder.
- Optimized targeting. Google recommends that you use optimized targeting for optimal campaign performance.
View and edit, if needed, the Ad group URL options that you created on the Demand Gen page.
Click Go to Ad 1.

Step 9: Create your ads

Follow these steps to create your ads at the ad-group level:

Choose the type of ad you want to create:
- If you don’t use Product feeds, your options are:
  - Single image ad: An ad with one image
  - Video ad: An ad with a video
  - Carousel ad: An ad with multiple images in a carousel
- If you use Product feeds, your options are:
  - Image and products ad: Show ads using your image and product assets
  - Video and products ad: Show ads using your video and product assets
  - Products only ad: Show ads that only showcase your products
Enter an ad name.
Add your media: images (up to 20) and company logo
Enter the text information for your ad, such as headline and description.
Enter your final and display URL addresses.
Click Go to review. Your review page displays all the settings for your Demand Gen campaign. If you have errors or are missing information, you can click Fix it.
You can add another ad group or more ads for your Demand Gen campaign:
- Go to the Demand Gen navigation panel on the left.
- Click the more icon next to the ad group or ad. You can duplicate, pause, delete, or create a new ad group or ad.
After you have resolved all issues, you are ready to publish the campaign.
Click Publish campaign.

Next steps

After you have published your Demand Gen campaign, you can perform other Demand Gen activities. Here are a few links from Google Ads Help Center to explore:

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?