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Is Demand Gen actually performing for anyone, or is it just a way to force us into Shorts inventory?
Posted by on January 5, 2026 at 1:34 pmI’ve been migrating some legacy Discovery campaigns over to Demand Gen this month, and I’m having a hard time justifying the extra creative effort.
With Discovery, we could get away with high-quality static images and still hit decent CPAs. Now, the rep is breathing down my neck saying we must have vertical video assets to "unlock the full inventory" (Shorts).
My issue is:
- We don’t have a ton of vertical video creative ready.
- The "Ad Strength" meter stays poor unless I upload like 5 different ratios.
- The traffic feels … spammy? I'm seeing a lot of clicks but the conversion rate compared to old Discovery seems lower.
Is anyone seeing a genuine lift by feeding the beast with all these different video formats? Or are you guys just running it image-only and ignoring the "limited reach" warnings?
Trying to figure out if I need to fight for a creative budget to make dedicated Shorts/Reels assets or if I should just stick to PMax..
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1 Reply
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You do not have to run video at all in DG. You can simply run image ads if you wish. Of course if you run video ads there’s a good argument to include assets that serve well across different device types. Typically this involves either providing portrait (for mobile) and landscape (for other devices) versions OR a single square video which can work fairly well globally.
The vast majority of advertisers still don’t produce videos in portrait format. Google will actually convert these for you, but it’s nothing more than adding space around the original video… I actually find this performs more poorly than just running landscape… many users will rotate their phone orientation to compensate. Yes, just ignore the warning.
Those that do produce portrait videos are usually influencers or advertisers that heavily rely on social media for new business.
Importantly, don’t let Google reps push you around – their JOB is to get you to spend more money. Sometimes that aligns with your business goals but often it’s only self-serving for Google.
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Across ecom clients, it does well when remarketing is done for a brand with tons of traffic. It can do well with prospecting but really depends on how well he creative is done and do we have a lot of creative we can test. If the client is already doing a ton on Meta or TikTok, then we can pull from there and use that on Demand Gen
Look at Lead Gen clients, we see Demand Gen work for prospecting and have a similar CPA to what we would get on search campaigns. We have a real estate client spending $2 million per year and Demand Gen is something we want to invest more into in 2026.
For your situation, you need to test creative and how you set up your campaigns. Quality over quality when it comes to creative. Not every client is going to have 5 different versions of something but we do try to get clients to make at least 3 of any creative.
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