Where it fits among Google’s campaign types:
- Search and Shopping capture people who already know what they want.
- Performance Max and AI Max for Search capture and convert based on existing intent signals.
- Demand Gen creates the intent in the first place, reaching people who haven’t searched yet but match a brand’s ideal customer.
Example: a furniture brand launching a new sofa collection could use Demand Gen to show lifestyle video to people who’ve shown interest in home decor on YouTube, before any of them type “sofa” into Google.
Demand Gen replaced Discovery campaigns in 2024. Alongside Performance Max and AI Max for Search, it forms Google’s three core campaign types for covering the full customer journey with fewer, more automated formats.
