They’ve been with us since the start of 2024; here, we take a closer look at Google’s Demand Gen Campaign format and what it could do for your cause. Whether you’re looking to raise money, drive awareness or deliver your services to more beneficiaries, there is usually a use case with Demand Gen Campaigns.
If you’ve been around the digital block a few times you probably remember Google’s Discovery Ad format, well, Demand Gen is the next iteration of Discovery Ads.
What are Demand Gen Ads?
We know that advertising on search is a great way to reach people who are already looking for something, whether they’re early in their journey and researching options (top of funnel) or ready to buy and searching specifically for products or brands (bottom of funnel).
Often, the toughest part of marketing is generating demand for your product in the first place. Demand generation campaigns aim to address this question.
A Demand Generation campaign should enable you to build your mid-upper funnel engagement, that is, reach users earlier in their decision-making journey (awareness and interest phases).
1 in 3 consumers say that they have purchased something on Google feeds that they were not originally shopping for.
Source: Google Market Research
Google has positioned Demand Gen campaigns as a way to generate demand and deliver business results on Google’s most visual, entertaining surfaces. In other words, it’s a great way to get in front of people when they’re not actively using Google Search, so users might check their Gmail, browsing YouTube, or browsing the Google Discover Feed. This makes it a great avenue to grow traffic (and revenue) from Google if you’ve tapped out on search demand for whatever it is you’re promoting. That said, even if you haven’t tapped out on search it could still be worth testing to see which delivers greatest efficiency (noting that bottom-of-funnel search is hard to beat as a traffic source).

Do Demand Gen Campaigns replace Discovery Campaigns?
In short, yes, Demand Gen Ads are a new name for Discovery Ads – however, it’s not simply a case of a new name. Demand Gen Ads open up some new features that were not previously available with Discovery Ads only; the table below summarises these differences.
Discovery Ads | New Demand Gen Features | |
Expanded Reach | YouTube: Home, Search & Watch Next Feeds, Discover, Gmail | YouTube Shorts, In-Stream |
Tailored ad experiences | Image ads, Product feeds | Image + video ads in one campaign, new ad creation workflow with previews, A/B Experiments (images + videos) |
Flexible bidding options | Conversions, Conversion Value | Maximise Clicks |
Reporting & measurement | Standard Google Ads reporting, Asset reporting, Unique Reach | Conversion Path Reports, Data Driven Attribution, Brand Lift, Conversion Lift |
Audiences | Google Audiences, optimized targeting | Lookalike Segments, Device targeting |
How can I use Demand Gen Ads for my Charity?
If you’re already using Search and have tested Performance Max ads then Demand Gen is the next logical step (within the Google eco-system anyway) at boosting your traffic and conversions.
We’ve seen successful Demand Gen campaigns with objectives ranging from one-off donor acquisition to lead generation-focused petitions. If you’re lucky enough to have a brand budget then Demand Gen is an excellent tool to add your arsenal. However, with each of these use cases the main consideration is your KPIs (key performance indicators) and making sure you’re clear on what success will look like for your organisation. With clear KPIs you can then start interrogating the performance data from your Demand Gen campaigns and begin to refine your campaign.
Where does Demand Gen fit within by Digital Fundraising or Marketing Mix?
We get it. There are so many options when it comes to digital campaigning, is Demand Gen going to give you the best bang for your buck!? There’s no right or wrong answer here, to help formulate a response here’s what we’d recommend thinking about:
- Objectives – as always be super clear on what you’re looking to achieve. We’d always recommend using SMART objectives – so make them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. For example to acquire 10 new regular donors during the month of September at a cost per new donor of $300 with a target average gift amount of $40/month. Or, if you’re not looking directly for performance outcomes then something like this: Deliver 2,000 users during the month of September with an average engagement rate of 75%.
- Existing performance – are you happy with the performance of Search and Performance Max (PMAX) in terms of cost per outcome. If not, we’d recommend spending time optimising here first.
- Can you scale results from existing campaigns whilst maintaining efficiency – check your campaign impression shares – can you spend more/improve campaign quality to drive more results at a similar cost, or at least a cost per result that within your acceptable boundaries?
- If you’ve got this far, then you’re likely looking for further scale – it might be time to test Demand Gen. Obviously, you need to weigh this up against opportunities presented by other channels.
Can you show me some examples of Demand Gen Ads from Charities?
The images below show some example placements for Demand Gen Ads.



Demand Gen ads should be handled the same way as any other approach to advertising, with careful testing and consideration of the other ads you’re running. I’ve seen some Demand Gen focused campaigns really take off, whilst others have fallen flat. Getting the right creative, story and call to action are all vital components when it comes to determining how much success you will see.
Adam Brady, Digital Strategist
How are Demand Gen Campaigns Different from other types of campaigns, such as Performance MAX (PMAX)?
The biggest differentiator between Demand Gen when compared to Performance Max (PMAX) campaigns is that Demand Gen offers much more control over audience targeting, whereas PMAX campaigns don’t offer any hard targeting options (instead relying on algorithms to steer targeting automatically).
Whilst Demand Gen campaigns can be set to optimise based on conversions (and conversion value), they can also be set to deliver clicks – which makes them useful across the spectrum of driving bottom-of-funnel outcomes through to building your upper to mid-funnel traffic (making people aware and reaching them during the consideration phase of the decision making journey). Meanwhile, the focus of PMAX is only on performance outcomes, conversions, and conversion value.
The final key differentiator is that Demand Gen campaigns are focused on Google’s most visual ad formats. This includes YouTube Shorts, YouTube in-feed, Discover and Gmail. It gets slightly confusing here as you can still reach all of these ad formats using a Performance Max campaign (PMAX Also reaches Search and YouTube more broadly), however, it’s important to remember that the visual ad formats accessible with Demand Gen combined with more audience targeting control should really enable you to focus on the quality of the inventory you’re reaching.
Should I be promoting my charity using Demand Gen Campaigns?
Generally speaking, Demand Gen is worth testing if you have worked through the list outlined earlier in this article (See “Where does Demand Gen fit within my Digi fundraising mix”). However, we’d recommend thinking about your channel diversification ambitions and whether running Demand Gen supports these – remembering that Demand Gen is essentially just more advertising in different areas of the Google eco-system – great if it works, but it’s always good practice to have more than one platform provider delivering traffic to your campaigns.
I need help generating results for my charity
Get in touch with a Ninja today, we’d love to hear more about your challenges and find a way to help you deliver on your goals.