Demand Gen experts

A Search campaign captures an intent that has already formed. Demand Gen works upstream: it puts an image or a video in front of someone who was not looking for you yet, on the surfaces where they spend time. It is also the only Google format where lookalike segments still exist, built on your own lists. With a dated caveat: Google has been moving them to suggestion mode since March 2026, at which point the reach slider stops restricting targeting. What matters becomes the quality of the seed list, not the setting.

The list is long and it is owned. No configurable frequency cap: Google answers « no » to the question and explains why, « frequency capping is a concept that works well in a brand campaign context, however, Demand Gen is a performance optimized campaign where frequency caps can sometimes be counterproductive ». No keyword targeting, no campaign-level negative keywords, no topic or placement exclusions anywhere but at account level, no brand exclusions, and no campaign-level content suitability setting since April 2026. What is set here is set for the whole account.

Demand Gen acts before the click, so last-click metrics understate it by construction. Google provides a platform-comparable column, built to benchmark against Meta or TikTok, and pairs it with a remarkable instruction: do not use it to compare Demand Gen with other Google products, Display, Search or Performance Max. A vendor publishing a column while forbidding its internal comparative use is saying something important about how comparable its own formats are. Lift studies exist, but they go through a Google representative and assume budget floors. When the question is what the format genuinely creates, a geo test or a contribution model answers better.