Google Ads to Transition Video Action Campaigns to Demand Gen Campaigns

To find Video Action Campaigns in your Google Ads account, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Campaigns tab.
2. Click on ‘+ Filter’.
3. Add the following two filters:
   • Campaign Type: Video
   • Campaign Subtype: Drive Conversions
4. Optionally, include the ‘Status’ filter and select all except ‘Removed’.

Tip: To get a sum of the number of campaigns after filtering, check the number of total rows under the campaigns table. For example, if you see Rows: 1-57 of 57, it means you have 57 Video Action Campaigns in your account.

When upgrading to Demand Gen, consider the following best practices:

Setup:

• Use one of the upgrade tools to create your Demand Gen campaign.
• Follow the same conversion goals and settings as in your Video Action Campaign.
• Use a consolidated campaign structure and combine audience themes into the same ad groups.

Audience:

• Replicate your audience approach from comparable Video Action campaigns.
• Test Lookalikes to see if they improve performance.

Budget:

• Conversion based bidding: Set a daily budget greater than 20x your Expected CPA.
• Value based bidding: Set a daily budget greater than 20x (expected average conversion value / tROAS).

Bidding:

• Use similar bid levels to your Video Action campaigns.
• Set your conversion attribution window to >28 days.
• Limit bid changes to only +/- 15% and wait a week between changes.

Creative:

• Use existing video assets, ensuring a mix of horizontal and vertical videos.
• Add image assets as well.
• Review creative best practices.

Duration:

• Run your Demand Gen test for a minimum of 4-6 weeks.
• Extend the duration to avoid unexpected performance issues.

Evaluation Benchmark:

• Evaluate your Demand Gen performance against campaign-specific KPIs aligned to your marketing goals and bidding strategy.

Demand Gen campaign billing uses mixed billing, similar to PMax, and varies based on the Google surface and ad format:

• YouTube video: CPM (Cost Per Mille)
• YouTube image: CPM
• Gmail: Teaser Click (The first click to expand the ad; you aren’t charged for the secondary click to the website)
• Discover image: CPC (Cost Per Click)
• Discover video: Engaged view (When someone watches your video for 5 seconds or more and clicks to play the video or clicks a link, that’s considered an engaged view.)

After upgrading to Demand Gen, your Video Action Campaign will be retained in your account. Here’s what happens:

• The original Video Action Campaign will be paused or removed, and a newly created Demand Gen campaign will appear.
• The Demand Gen campaign will be named the original Video Action Campaign name + #2.

Example: A Video Action Campaign named ‘Summer Shirts’ will be renamed to ‘Summer Shirts #2’ after auto-migration.

This naming convention makes it easy to map source Video Action Campaigns to their migrated Demand Gen campaign upgrade.