An introduction to Demand Gen

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00:00so Google actually recommends at least 15K budget for four to six weeks 15 gaming 15 minimum and they even say the minimum budget yeah they even say minimum budget interesting up to 50K so that's a big range that starts at 15K for just four to six six weeks GM GM everybody GM welcome back to the PPC Mastery podcast in this episode we're going to be talking about the Talk of the Town which is demand gen it is so everybody's talking about demand gen of course Google did a lot of announcements recently and they announced that demand gen is taking over Discovery and you I know you've been testing with the man gen a bit over the last few months you had access to the closed beta right so yeah I think in this episode we're going to be talking about what the demand gen is what the impact is on Discovery campaigns on your whole Google out the Google Ads account as a whole and then maybe in the next next episode we'll talk more about best practices what's worked for you yeah but now let's just talk about what it is actually and how it's going to change the landscape so yeah what is demand gen and why is everybody talking about it yeah so so first of all I think it is less popular or less groundbreaking than when we had the pmax announcements so I've seen some posts popping up on my LinkedIn timeline about Dimension yeah but I think it it isn't really as hyped as much right as BMX because obviously PMX was about search and shopping as well and imagine

01:36is mainly focused on Mid and upper funnel zooming in on display no sorry on YouTube and Discovery it is replacing Discovery yeah that wasn't really clear in the beginning as well so after the first couple of weeks somebody came came in and they actually mentioned I think it was the Google Ads liaison yeah I think it was her Jenny Jenny I think it was Jenny saying that it was it was actually going to replace Discovery and that's when that's when it got serious so yeah I have been experimenting with Discovery a bit but it isn't really impactful in my opinion especially in the mid and upper funnel region I am using it or have been using it for remarketing purposes because it is relatively cheap traffic and if you are able to Target your your audiences through discovery on remarketing yeah there's some nice additional conversion volume over there as well but yeah now we have Dimension coming up as a replacement for Discovery and it is now in open beta for basically all of the advertisers that want to test with it I had access to the close beta for one of my biggest clients fortunately so I've been doubling around a bit and yeah it is kind of groundbreaking in a way that we we now see where Google is heading towards so we now have BMX that's a combination of all of the placements and networks combined everything just in one campaign and now we have another combined all-in-one campaign for just upper funnel and mid funnel that

03:13combines Discovery and YouTube placements no display for whatever reason I don't really know why they haven't included this way maybe if I'm just thinking about Google's perspective maybe they want to focus more on YouTube shorts inventory and discover inventory which is sort of unsold maybe yeah maybe the Lesser less popular placements yeah that's been one of my theories as well yeah but yeah maybe throwing in display could ramp up the spend even more but maybe they will they will do it in the future or it's a really it's a decision they've already made yeah so with Dimension we can Target specific placements like YouTube Shorts YouTube in streams YouTube home page feeds I think but also the discovery placements like Gmail the Chrome Android app the home screen where you scroll through which basically the Discover function yeah how it's already being sold through Discovery so there might be interesting placements if you do have the budget if you have the wish to really work on your exposure but if I go through the best practices and through the pitch decks of Google it is really really built for the bigger advertisers yeah so Google actually recommends at least 15K budget for four to six weeks 15 gaming 15 minimum and they even say the minimum budget yeah they even a minimum budget interesting up to 50K so that's a big range that starts at 15K for just four to six six weeks so that actually means that it isn't really a suitable campaign type

04:50for the lower end of The Advertiser so if you're just starting out if you don't have the budgets for Mid upper funnel at all or if you're working with a constraint budget you're not really well you're not really set with demand gen I think it's for the biggest advertises only and if you take a look at the minimum budgets if you were to drive a Target CPA or Target row as function then Google is actually recommending to set a budget of 15 times as high as your efficient Target or Target CPA so let's say you're doing you need to hit a officially Target of 100 euros Target CPA then you have to set a daily budget of 1500 Euros that's already 40 45 000 Euros per month for your dimension only campaign and I really do not know a lot of advertisers that are able to push those kinds of budgets yeah in just Dimension alone because if you're pushing those budgets then you are already doing huge numbers in Search and maybe shopping dedicated campaign types at all so yeah I'm really curious about the adoption of this product yeah and I don't know if I'm jumping ahead now but demand gen if you compare it to for example pmax or video action campaigns or even display where does it fit in the in the funnel because it's not necessarily for driven for performance is it yeah Google is saying it can be a Performance Based campaign I think you can compare it to a video action campaign so YouTube for Action if you're still used to that term and YouTube for Action tends to work if you multiply

06:28your non-branded search or shopping CPA by at least two times then it tends to work in some verticals and I think you can compare to to to that campaign type and to that phase in the funnel so it's really mid funnel not really a upper funnel campaign type but I think it's somewhere hovering between upper funnel and mid funnel where you try to well to reach potential clients that haven't heard about your brand that you're already trying to Prime for one of your services or maybe interesting categories subcategories specific products yeah it's trying to to generate demand for your future sales growth essentially yeah yeah so not necessarily bottom of funnel but then mid and upper close to middle number yeah I think it's a little bit more performance orientated than really upper funnel campaigns that are targeting specific Target cpms or reach so it's a little bit below your Die Hard branding campaign and what's the difference then you say the there's a difference there is it because you also have more performance driven bit strategies for example yeah you have actually four five bidding strategies you have maximize clicks yeah I haven't seen if there's a possibility to cap your CPC these but I think there will be a capping option then you have maximize conversions maximize conversions by using a Target CPA then you have maximize conversion value or you have maximize convert conversion value with a Target row as efficient Target so essentially you have five different bidding strategies and if

08:05it were to be a really upper funnel campaign type then it wouldn't have the maximize conversions and maximize conversion value bidding strategy so that's already pointing towards the fact that I think this is hovering somewhat in between to Upper funnel and mid funnel yeah yeah and and in terms of placements so you you already mentioned it's YouTube YouTube home so in-stream YouTube stream shorts shorts discover and Gmail and it's just all automated all automated you have the option of course to to upload your own creatives yeah but I think there will be an auto generated option as well so the creative part is really really really important especially if you need to push these kinds of budgets in order to see if you are getting traction because Google is saying 15K to 50K in four to six weeks as a test budget as a test budget so if you were to drive a test with this then you would definitely want to invest in your own Assets in your own images in your own YouTube shorts so please stay away from stock photos or your regular business video on your about us page of three minutes long so that's really not not going to help you getting performance in this campaign type there's a whole list of best practices already and things that you should do or shouldn't do and we'll be sharing that in a future episode so let's let's not dive to to specific in that part but yeah and are there any other technicalities of the mansion that are

09:43important to to know or understand yeah there are a few new features that we haven't seen prior to demand gen so we have a new ads type in fact we have a carousel ad yeah so if you want to create a carousel ad that's possible right now where you can basically swipe through different yeah ads so to say from left to right Google Ads will make sure that the ads will get product advertised based on the amount of cards you have so that's a nice little a new feature you have as well you have the possibility to create specific ad types within the ad groups that you want to create so if you want to create a video a type you're able to do just that or a carousel ad type you're you're able to do just that inside of an ad group then you have new audience targeting options so this is the first campaign type where we have seen the look-alike option which is kind of cool yeah and kind of interesting to see Google Ads taking this route and this is similar to meta ads right we have I think we have both done some meta ads a couple of years ago when we try to do everything as a Google Ads specialist so it's kind of similar to the audience expansion all these expansion is kind of similar to optimized targeting but they also have a look-alike expansion percentage Yeah and that's basically what Google Ads is mimicking right now you have the option to to to expand your seat list by two and a half percent five percent and ten percent from narrow to really broad since this is a really new function I haven't really have any best practices

11:21what kind of setting to choose still have to test I think you still have to test what actually works for you but I think if you were to select optimize targeting already then the algorithm is going to expand to your audience segments at all quite broadly yeah so I'm really curious how much impact this look-alike expansion is really going to make yeah but it gives you a sensor control yes it makes sense yeah but it's it's nice maybe we we see see a similar future a feature adopted in PMX in the near future that wouldn't be that would be sick yeah it wouldn't surprise me yeah yeah and in terms of targeting is it like pmax that it's open targeting with signals or do are there also other audience segments that you can directly Target it's similar to it's similar to your Discovery thing okay so you actually create an audience yourself yeah based on your own segments and then you can you can select if you want to expand on that targeting using optimized targeting and you and for your for your seat seat list you can actually choose whether you want to have it create a look-alike segment based on that yeah so yes more audience based than signal based yeah but Google is being Google so I don't know what's true yeah I think I think Google is using it using it as signals not really a starting yeah at least that's what I think yeah definitely if you're going to select the option optimize targeting yeah which is so it's also Optimus targets also in demand gen yeah

12:59and the look-alike segments both interesting yeah so are the lookalike segments then you I think you haven't run them yet then you know in those in that Dimension campaign no because I wonder if that's an actual audience segment that you can Target and then do optimized targeting on the lookalikes or if it's just instead of I think how it works is basically you create a look-alike expansion on your your audience segment within your audience audience segment itself yeah and then you can choose whether or not to use optimize targeting on the audience that you have already created yeah so you can go February broad if you want to if you want to and I think that's that could be the power of demand gen so if you are looking for growth if you're really looking for additional exposure and you are somewhat looking at the performance of your campaigns then yeah it might be an interesting option to consider yeah there's actually a great way to in dimension which I'm kind of hyped about to measure the uplifts so we have several measurement protocols so to say that can measure search lifts brand lifts conversion lifts by using Yeah by using different Frameworks so you can actually see how Dimension impacts your search campaign it's super interesting brand lifts so are people looking for your brand more frequently after you've used Dimension and well what are your conversion uplifts so are people actually converting more is it driving

14:38incremental convert versions since you have started running Dimension so these are really interesting models to use and to leverage I think but they are being based on what what data points Google Google has so I think you should take it with a big grain of salt if you were to use these well lift studies so to say a search brand the conversion lift studies then I would definitely pair that with your third-party attribution tool and I think if you are doing these kinds of budgets then you should have already a third third party attribution a tool in place to properly see if well how your campaigns are running and how everything is being attributed towards your final conversion yeah especially as you do more inside of Google Ads and you because I think with the managing Google is also trying to compete more with meta like Facebook Instagram Tick Tock ads etc etc and then I mean it's not necessarily bad by itself if you do more on the Google side but as you switch more budget to shift more budget towards one platform I think it becomes even more important to analyze with a third-party tool because otherwise they have all the power and they say this is the truth yeah and then you just have to believe that it's true even though it's not all which is not true no absolutely not I think it's never never the the truth no no because on the on the other hand metas also going to say the exact same thing yeah and if you if you add up all of the conversions then you end up by two three times as many conversions that you actually exactly have inside of

16:15your back end yep so you definitely need an independent tool to look over well the attribution of all of your campaigns yeah yeah and is there any I don't know if you if you know but speaking of attribution is there data driven attribution with other campaigns with the manager yeah yeah yes yeah that's pretty nice yeah yeah so data driven attribution DDA is also Incorporated within demand gen yeah I I still have to see how it works with different kind of conversion actions because what I have seen from practice is if you were to use offline conversion tracking by importing close deals or qualified leads or whatever data point that you want to upload then I sense or have seen that campaign types like display YouTube and Discovery aren't really attributing those types of conversions to themselves and if you were to use a Google Ads attack specifically that is just well that is Gtech based then you start to see in well a lot more conversions not only a few true conversions but only but also while last click conversions so I haven't compared those two yeah but I think DDA works best if you were to drive on the well data the regular Gtech conversion action yeah and not on OCT yeah so what I tend to do is I tend to select if you were to run an OCT then I were to select OCT conversion actions as a primary conversion action for my search campaign for Legion SAS and for my upper funnel mid funnel campaigns I tend to use a

17:53Google tech based conversion action and then just use different primary conversions on campaign level yeah campaign specific goals so you let the algorithm optimize for different conversion data so to say yeah yeah is there anything else that goes into the man gen that's new or I think those are the points that are because then yeah it's gonna take over from Discovery this cover is going away I think in the next few months it's going to get rolled out and then somewhere early 2024 I think Discovery is going to get killed completely have you read something about a migration from Discovery to Dimension it's going to be Auto migrated no you can opt in at first maybe even select advertisers but I think somewhere between now and October so you can actually go and make the switch and then the historical data is going to be pulled over just like smart shopping 2pmx exactly yeah yeah and then somewhere in q1 pmax Discovery is going away and then all campaigns are going to be Auto migrated to the new dimension think somewhere in q1 fun times ahead yeah yeah but so if you're driving Discovery campaigns yeah then you should really reconsider yeah if you want to migrate to demand gender because alone I I know a lot of accounts and I know a lot of accounts that I manage myself that have Discovery campaigns enabled yeah but mainly focus on remarketing on the Discover placements and I think I'm not going to migrate them to Dimension because it's just a different different campaign type yeah yeah what will you do then for the remarketing switch to display in YouTube

19:30I think yeah I think it's it's best to to in those cases what I know for now is to switch to a campaign specific type so display remarketing YouTube remarketing yeah for your remarketing places and what do you personally think of the mansion outside of all the technicalities I think it is nice to see where Google is heading towards they're heading towards a a more well all in all-in campaign type sort of thing just like PMX so you see where the future is going I think it is a great campaign type for the bigger advertisers that are really maxing out on every Network already and they really want to spend in order to well gain additional exposure whenever possible if you are a mid or low size Advertiser I think Dimension isn't really suitable for you right now that can change in the future but if you take a look at the budgets that Google is pushing right now then I think it wouldn't make sense to to allocate a 50 to 100 euro per day Budget on Dimension I think it will be way too way too low unless you can drive really crazy amounts of conversion volume through micro conversions for example and if you're possible to 15x your target CPA but I think for most advertisers this isn't really suitable it's meant for the the mature advertisers that really want to want to work on their well exposure already max

21:08out performance and now what else can we do and besides that I think you should also be really mature in the creative sides of things so if you're going to leverage well demand gen then you need to have a really big library of Kick-Ass professional creatives because you're doing a lot of YouTube shorts you're going to do a lot of well YouTube in-stream placements and a lot of new discover placements and they should really be well on point really made according to the well best practices that Google is pushing for example the ABCD framework of YouTube mobile first really big bot well copy text placements elements inside of your your videos for example and I think only the bigger Brands right now are able to allocate budgets towards those kinds of Investments yeah I personally have trouble convincing smaller and even mid-size advertisers to spend a few thousand Euros to their creative part and to create YouTube videos by hiring a video agency or whatever so yeah I think I think we have to see the adoption where where it goes but I think you will not see a lot of accounts with the Mansion campaigns enabled yeah yeah cool so what are you going to do next because you've already ran the the test in the closed beta yeah is that still it's still running still running still running what's next for for that test or are you doing any anything specific well right now we've set it up according to the best practices that Google has

22:45shared with us during the closed beta it has been running for quite a while now I think for seven or eight weeks already so right now we're going to refine the campaign and see where we can actually grow but yeah we still have to see then do this as a search lift and all those studies Etc and I think if Google is offering those lift studies search Brands conversion live studies then that also implies that it's not necessarily focused towards conversion directly because if it was then you would see the Converses probably directly coming from that campaign type but now it's much more like like for example with bumper ads I I think bumper ads are much more upper funnel on YouTube yeah but they also offer those studies to sort of prove like yeah even though it's working yeah zero conversions from these campaigns they're working because look at this data yeah so I think if they also do that with demand gen then that kind of tells me that it's probably not going to be one of your biggest conversion campaigns but I don't know leading up to up to that yeah that's always kind of yeah and I really think I really think that if you want to see if this works for you as an Advertiser that you really should work with third-party attribution tool yeah I think you cannot really trust the data inside of Google Ads yeah I think just like pmax Google attribute a lot of conversions through DDA to meet and upper funnel campaigns to basically well pretend they're working and I think in a lot in a lot of times they will be

24:23working but I think that through the truth will be that they will work really less effectively than they pretend to work yeah that's an assumption I think you have to say that for yourself and your own data but that's that's my gut feeling right now all right yeah yeah I think we can go on and on about best practices but we will do an additional episode about that yeah there's a lot of a lot more to say about bidding strategies creatives audience targeting campaign campaign structure so yeah I will dive into a specific episode about demand gem best practices in the future solo episode nice so stay tuned for that cool all right thanks everybody for listening to you and watching and all that stuff don't forget to like And subscribe leave a review and lastly share this with a colleague or a friend who might be interested in upscaling their PPC game all right with big big Pockets with big Pockets yeah for exactly 15 to 50K per month all right that's it for demand gen let's see what the future is going to bring and yeah it's always at least to me it's always fun to see new campaign times we've rolled out because because even though like pmax whether you hate it or love it it did bring like new energy into the BBC world so I think this might do that as well I hope so we'll see yeah all right see you next time in the next episode ciao