adZoic's core is open-auction buying — the real-time bidding you can watch on our how-it-works page. Demand Gen works differently. It's how we run campaigns on Google's own surfaces — YouTube, Discover and Gmail — where a lot of engaged attention already lives. Here's what it is and how it fits.
What "Demand Gen" means
Demand generation is upper-funnel advertising: reaching people who aren't searching for you yet, with image and video ads that build interest and demand. Demand Gen (capital-G) is Google's campaign type for exactly that — visually rich ads placed across three of its highest-attention, opt-in feeds.
Unlike our real-time-bidding campaigns, which bid directly into open ad exchanges, Demand Gen is fulfilled by Google on its owned inventory. adZoic builds and manages the campaign for you; Google serves it. It's a complementary channel, not a replacement — one plan can run RTB across the open web and Demand Gen on Google's surfaces.
Where the ads show
A single Demand Gen campaign can appear across three places, and Google decides where each impression is most likely to land well:
- YouTube — in the home feed, Shorts, in-stream and the watch-next feed. This is where video does its best work.
- Discover — the personalised feed people scroll on the Google app and Android home screen when they're browsing, not searching.
- Gmail — the Promotions and Social tabs, where an ad sits among things people have chosen to receive.
RTB is the open web's auction. Demand Gen is Google's owned feeds — YouTube, Discover and Gmail. adZoic runs both, so you reach people in more of the moments that matter.
The creative you bring
Demand Gen is a visual format, so the creative does a lot of the work. A campaign is built from a small, reusable creative set. For image ads that set holds three sizes, so an ad can fit whichever slot it lands in:
- Landscape (1.91:1) — the wide banner shape.
- Square (1:1) — for tighter, feed-style placements.
- Logo (1:1) — a clean, distinct brand mark.
Alongside the images you provide a handful of short headlines and descriptions and a business name; Google mixes and matches them to fit each placement. Video creative can run too, which is what makes Demand Gen a natural home for a good YouTube spot.
Use a genuinely different image for the square and the logo slots. Google de-duplicates assets by their content, so the same picture uploaded twice is rejected — the logo should be your mark, not a crop of the banner.
How adZoic runs a Demand Gen campaign
The set-up mirrors any other campaign, with a few Demand-Gen-specific choices:
- Goal & bidding — pick a target cost per action (Target CPA) if you're optimising for conversions, or let it maximise conversions within budget. Target CPA needs conversion tracking in place so the model has a signal to learn from.
- Budget — a simple daily cap.
- Where & who — country and language targeting, plus your audiences.
- Creative set — the images (and any video), headlines, descriptions and final URL people land on.
One deliberate safety step: every Demand Gen campaign is created paused. Nothing spends until someone reviews it and switches it on — activation is always an explicit, human decision, never automatic. Once it's live, performance flows back into your reporting — impressions, video views, clicks, cost and conversions — the same place you read the rest of your campaigns.
The URL you send clicks to has to be a real, live page. Google disapproves ads that point at parked or placeholder domains — so point Demand Gen at a page with genuine content, like your product or campaign page.
When to reach for it
Demand Gen earns its place when you want reach and interest at the top of the funnel — a product launch, entering a new market, or keeping a brand familiar — with creative that's built to be seen, not just clicked. Pair it with your real-time-bidding campaigns and adZoic keeps the whole thing on one plan and one report.
Want to see it against your own goals? Request a demo, or start with what a DSP actually is.
