Google is sunsetting its well-known video action campaigns, folding those performance ads into Demand Gen, an AI-powered ad product. The move follows a debate among advertisers about the quality of the inventory available within Google’s video action campaigns, and it funnels marketers into Demand Gen, which mostly targets audiences across Google’s properties including YouTube and YouTube Shorts. At the same time, Google will also start to place Demand Gen campaigns outside its own properties as part of this change.

On Wednesday, Google announced the update to its lineup of ad campaigns, saying that starting in the second quarter of next year, video action campaigns will be “upgraded” to Demand Gen. Video action campaigns are YouTube-style video ads with calls to action, such as links for consumers to visit brands’ websites or to browse shopping catalogs.

The video action ads typically run on YouTube, but marketers can set them to run on Google’s video partner sites. Now, those video campaigns will roll into Demand Gen, which uses automation to create multi-format ads, text, image and video depending on the placement, and they run on YouTube, Discover and Gmail. As part of the marketing migration to Demand Gen, Google has started placing those ads on video partners, too, the company announced. Also, similar to video action campaigns, advertisers will be able to buy Demand Gen ads through its demand-side platform Display and Video 360, Google said.

Demand Gen caters to similar marketing goals as video action campaigns, but Google said Demand Gen provides improved performance for marketers, pointing to DoorDash as an example. The online food deliverer saw a 15 times higher conversion rate with Demand Gen compared to video action campaigns, at 50% more efficient cost per action, according to Google.

“The way we look at it is Demand Gen is giving you everything that you get on video action and a lot more,” said Michael Levinson, Google Ads VP and general manager, in an interview with Ad Age. “What Demand Gen offers is really three things,” Levinson said. “One is, you can add images to your video campaigns … It’s very clear, [in] the data, that if you add images to your video campaigns, you’re going to get better performance. Our early data shows about 20% more conversion if you do that.”

Secondly, Demand Gen campaigns are placed on a wider variety of ad inventory, mostly in front of 3 billion monthly users on YouTube, Discover and Gmail, Levinson said. Lastly, Demand Gen has better targeting options by creating “lookalike” audiences to reach new people who resemble successfully targeted consumers, Levinson said.

Automation jitters

Last year, Google launched Demand Gen, an ad product that could appeal to social media marketers to help them find new customers. Like the name suggests, the ads generate demand for products and services, which marketers use as a steppingstone to conversions. Demand Gen was Google’s second major AI-powered, automated ad product, following Performance Max. The automated ad platforms rely on machine learning to help decide where to place ads, what audiences to target and how much the advertiser bids. There also are optional generative AI tools that design the ads to appear in different aspect ratios and with custom creative configurations depending on where the ad appears. Automation across ad platforms has set off some alarm bells among advertisers who worry about AI taking over marketing functions humans used to control while offering less transparency as to where ads run and how they performed. Meanwhile, the platforms, including Google and Meta, continue to march into automation, giving their ad machines more discretion to manage campaigns.

Google’s video action campaigns were the source of some consternation among advertisers last year, when watchdog group Adalytics claimed to find the ads appearing on low-quality sites. Many brands that expected ads to run on YouTube, found their ads on partner sites with questionable content, Adalytics claimed. Google has since upgraded how it reports where ads run and made campaign controls more obvious for marketers that don’t want to appear on third-party sites. With Demand Gen’s new role taking over video action campaigns, marketers can choose not to run the campaigns on partner sites and there is brand safety reporting, according to Google.

Demand Gen is very much a play by Google to appeal to social media marketers used to apps such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, according to marketers. Brands such as Mondelēz, Toyota and Samsung have embraced the format, making it part of how they run their Google ad strategy.

“This is Google’s attempt to socialize their offering,” said Navah Hopkins, ad specialist and public evangelist at Optmyzr, a digital marketing platform. “A lot of the settings are very similar to Meta. A lot of the targeting mechanics are very similar to Meta.”

Advertisers have been slow to adopt Demand Gen, however, Hopkins said. Optmyzr serves about 40,000 marketers and brands, which use its tools to manage digital campaigns, and only about 1,000 of the advertisers have adopted Demand Gen, Hopkins said. Yet, Demand Gen leads to higher performance for marketers that have taken the plunge, Hopkins said.

“Everyone’s sleeping on Demand Gen, and then they’re going to be very sad when they’re playing catch up,” Hopkins said.

‘Win cheaply’

Video action campaigns tend to perform well in feed-like settings—a vertical scroll of content, Hopkins said, but Demand Gen can adapt to multiple settings. Demand Gen can add videos to campaigns that otherwise would be images or text, and vice versa.

“Demand Gen and video, both of them, represent a really powerful opportunity to win and to win cheaply,” Hopkins said, “but it requires advertisers overcoming their inherent fear of video.”

Google’s emphasis on Demand Gen is a way to ramp up ads on YouTube Shorts, the vertical video feed that competes with TikTok and Instagram, according to Jack Chape, chief media officer at marketing agency RocketMill. “We’ve seen Demand Gen work best in a full-funnel approach,” Chape said by email, “when paired with PMax and video reach campaigns across YouTube, where we can exercise more control over content, frequency and flighting.”

Video reach campaigns are the kind that target wide audiences to maximize views, mostly for broad brand awareness plays.

Brands are still trying to figure out where Demand Gen fits in their Google plans, and performance can be hit or miss, Chape said. “Take up across all advertisers has been varied and performance has been a mixed bag depending on the vertical,” Chape said. “There is perhaps an element of media buyers struggling to place where it fits in their media plans, with many naively expecting to see direct-response performance.”

Google’s Levinson had some tips for brands to adjust after their video action campaigns morph into Demand Gen, next year. A “conservative” approach would be for marketers to basically copy and paste their campaign settings from the older video campaigns, and they can run those through Demand Gen with little change, but performance will likely stay the same, Levinson said. Google recommends video action advertisers test out more of the options within Demand Gen, Levinson said.

“Don’t just run your video. You add images, as well, you run everywhere that we let you run, and you embrace our new targeting, our new reporting, our new AI tools,” Levinson said, adding “we think that if you do that, you’re going to see noticeably better performance.”