Demand Gen campaigns were brought out last year by Google. Their purpose was to allow advertisers to “to help put your potential customers into a purchase mindset,” while they’re engaging with more visual and immersive digital platforms, including YouTube, Discover and Gmail.
Unlike the majority of Google’s ad inventory which are based on locating, identifying and capturing demand, this new format was about stimulating that valuable intention to buy.
They achieved this, they said, with tailored, “audience-first” ad experiences that allow you to better match with your audience, as well as with AI-based bidding and tracking based on your goals – be they site visits or sales.
Although we’ve never quite understood how they do that, they can’t have been a disaster because Google is now looking to build on the first year of this ad format with enhanced and enhancing features thanks to – what else? – AI.
So, what are these new features?
Rather than having to provide the visual assets yourself, Google will now create them from scratch, thanks to Generative image tools which “create stunning, high-quality image assets in just a few steps using prompts provided by you.”
If you’ve played around with image-generating AI tools like Dall-E, Midjourney, Adobe Firefly or Stable Diffusion you’ll know roughly how they work.
Even better than using text prompts is being able to use existing images you own and telling the software to replicate the style using a “Generate more like this” feature.
This will immediately and vastly expand the number of asset options available to your Demand Gen campaigns, while allowing you to test more and find out what is most appealing to your target audience.
Critically, Google is keen to reassure that “you’ll remain in full control to decide which suggested images will be added to your campaigns” as well as that “Google AI will never create two identical images” – so that you can be sure your ads will never be the same as a competitor.
Interestingly, any images generated using these tools will add to them features which allow them to be identified as artificially created.
As with any Google products, they’ll make it as idiot-proof as possible to use, with step-by-step guides to walk you through the process and show you where you’re going wrong.
Whatever it takes to keep you (or your clients) spending!
